Grade Reading Achievement Research Articles

Linking persistence and executive functions with later academic achievement

Executive functions (EF) and task persistence are key factors in academic development. However, EF and persistence have rarely been examined together, and it remains unclear whether these two constructs are independently related to intellectual development. The present study addressed this gap by examining whether EF and persistence in kindergarten predict math and reading achievement in second grade. We assessed 88 children (51% female; mean age = 73.4 months) on EF and persistence tasks at T1 and obtained teacher ratings of their academic competence at T2 (mean age = 94.6 months). Regression analyses showed that both EF and persistence predicted math achievement, but only EF predicted reading achievement. To sum up, our findings suggest that persistence may be particularly relevant for math, reflecting the ability to endure and sustain. These are skills that are typically not captured by EF measures. Consequently, early interventions should target EF and persistence to support children’s mathematical potential.

Effects of a Summer Tutoring Program on Reading Achievement in Grades K-5

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of an 18-day summer tutoring program in which graduate student tutors delivered 15 minutes of differentiated reading instruction (DRI) and a 30-minute interactive read-aloud (IRA) lesson each day. Students in grades K-5 (N = 179) attending a summer program at one urban elementary school completed a lesson-specific combination of pretest and posttest measures of letter-sound knowledge, decoding skills, oral reading fluency, and academic reading attitudes. Students were assigned to groups targeting phonemic awareness and word recognition (PAWR), word recognition and fluency (WRAF), fluency and comprehension (FAC), or vocabulary and comprehension (VAC) based on skill profiles. Paired-samples statistical tests were used to analyze pretest and posttest measures, and tutors were observed with a checklist to document implementation fidelity. Results indicated significant gains on specific subskill mastery measures of letter-sound knowledge for students in PAWR groups and decoding skills for students in PAWR and WRAF groups. Results were not significant for a curriculum-based measure of oral reading fluency for students in FAC groups and were significantly negative for students in VAC groups. There were no significant differences in gains based on instructional group size. There was no evidence of summer learning loss on academic reading attitudes. Tutors were able to implement DRI and IRA lessons with acceptable fidelity. These findings suggest that a summer tutoring program delivered by graduate students can improve targeted reading skills without negatively impacting reading attitudes.

Unlocking the Potential of Second Grade Students : Emotional Quotient as a Catalyst for Early Reading Skills Development

This study aims to analyze the Emotional Quotient level, reading achievement level, and emotional quotient's effect on reading achievement in grade II students. This method of research was ex-post facto with a quantitative approach. The instrument used to measure students' emotional quotient levels was a questionnaire; meanwhile, the instrument used to measure students' reading achievement levels was documentation. Furthermore, the data analysis technique was descriptive analysis, then proceeded with the prerequisite analysis test, starting from the normality and linearity tests. Finally, the research hypothesis was tested using a simple linear regression test and the F test. The result was that most students have a relatively low EQ, so their reading achievement was relatively low too. The results of a straightforward regression analysis yield the equation Y = 45.788 + 0.406X, which showed that an increase in the reading performance score of 0.406 would occur for every additional unit of emotional quotient score. Thus, a significant positive relationship existed between kids' EQ and reading achievement. Self-awareness, mood management, self-motivation, empathy, and relationship management were essential considerations when increasing students' emotional quotient (EQ). While age, teaching strategies, the environment in which students learn, and parental and educational support for encouraging and assisting students in learning to read were among the elements that influence students' reading achievement.

Predicting Reading Achievement Through Progress Monitoring in Elementary School

ABSTRACT This longitudinal study examined the effectiveness of a progress monitoring method, namely the Multilayer Instruction Model-Progress Monitoring (MIM-PM), which is a word reading fluency measure. It was used from 1st grade onward to predict the overall reading achievement of students in elementary school by tracking their reading achievement over the following six years. A total of 827 elementary school students in Japan participated in this study. At the end of every other year—2nd, 4th, and 6th grades—a standardized Reading Test (RT) was administered to assess overall reading achievement. The relationship between each MIM-PM measure and RT was determined using the latent growth curve model (LGCM). Using the LGCM, we confirmed that the MIM-PM had an acceptable fit for use in the prediction model for RT from 2nd to 6th grades. The MIM-PM slope explained the intercept of RT, rather than that of MIM-PM. Thus, it can assist in predicting reading achievement in later grades based on word reading fluency, as well as monitor students’ progress from an early stage of the educational process.

Pandemic effects on the reading trajectories of deaf and hard of hearing students: a pilot analysis.

It is important to understand the nature of the effect that the COVID-19 pandemic had upon student learning, especially those at risk such as deaf students. The limited communication that many deaf students have at home may mean less support is available for learning remotely. Reading may be one of the areas where progress was diminished. We collected Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) scores in reading from deaf students in a residential school for the deaf in grades 3 to 12 every fall and spring from 2016 to 2021. A cohort-sequential approach yielded growth data (2570 observations), with 546 students measured up to 10 times each. As is typical of MAP reading achievement in grades 3 to 12, growth was steep in early grades, slowing in later grades. Students in the Alternative Curriculum performed lower and grew slower. Cohorts differed, with more recent cohorts typically having higher performance than older cohorts. Tenure had a substantial effect, suggesting that students who had been in the school for the deaf longer had higher performance compared to students who joined the school as older students. The pandemic appeared to have a strong, but diminishing effect in each semester, but this effect differed widely across demographic groups. This suggests that effects of the pandemic are neither clear nor simple for deaf students even within the same school. These findings have implications for understanding how the impact of pandemic may vary as a function of deaf students’ educational experiences and other demographic factors.

The impact of pre-primary education on primary student achievement: evidence from SACMEQ III

ABSTRACT Previous studies have paid considerable attention to the impact on a child’s primary education of attending pre-primary school. Researchers have asserted that early educational intervention can compensate for the effects of poverty and inadequate learning environments on child development and school success. This study analyzes the relationship between pre-primary education and student reading and mathematics achievement in the sixth grade, focusing on disadvantaged children, in countries that participated in the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) III project. The results show that the achievement of children who attended pre-primary education is higher than that of those who did not. The achievement of children who have many home resources for learning is better than that of children who have a few such resources. In almost all countries, disadvantaged children’s achievement is increased when they attend pre-primary education. However, the contribution of pre-primary education to ameliorating social inequalities is different in the various contexts of different countries. These findings contribute to the discussion on the importance of early childhood care and education, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

Profiles of pre-service teachers’ personality traits and cognitive abilities: Relations with graduation and teacher self-efficacy

ABSTRACT The present study investigates the effect of pre-service teachers’ cognitive abilities and personality traits on graduation and teacher self-efficacy using data from the German National Education Panel Study (N = 5 520). Applying latent profile analysis, we found four different profiles of pre-service teachers based on high school grade point average, reading and maths achievement as well as the Big Five. Our results show that the profile with low cognitive abilities and low extraversion is negatively associated with graduation and teacher self-efficacy. Conversely, high cognitive abilities in combination with high extraversion are positively related to both aspects of university success. The findings provide novel evidence on the identification of at-risk students in teacher education and have implications on the selection of teacher candidates as well as targeted support offers.

Interaction of Socioeconomic Status and Class Relations on Reading

Student–teacher relationships (STRs) and socioeconomic status (SES) are two widely studied variables that have been found to predict reading achievement in the early grades. The current study extends the literature by investigating the interaction between STRs, measured using the STR Scale completed by teachers, and SES on reading achievement using a nationally representative data set. The study included approximately 8,380 first-grade students and 2,930 teachers, from 860 schools, representing a weighted sample of 3.15 million students. Results from multilevel modeling that controlled for student-, teacher-, and school-level factors found that both STRs and SES were strongly associated with student reading achievement. There was also a statistically significant interaction between close STRs and SES on reading achievement, suggesting that less conflictual STRs were associated with increased reading achievement scores for all students, but were particularly beneficial for students from low SES backgrounds. Educational implications are provided.

Attitudes towards reading amongst kindergarten and Grade 1 children

ABSTRACT The goals of the present study were to compare the reliability and convergent validity of two reading attitude measures for beginning readers and to get more insight into children’s reading attitude around the transition to formal reading instruction. 468 children in kindergarten and Grade 1 completed a more traditional questionnaire based on Aarnoutse’s (1990) Reading Attitude Scale and an alternative instrument based on Nielen et al.’s (2016) Picture Evaluation Task. Both measurements had adequate reliability for research purposes. Our analysis of the instruments' convergent validity suggested that the Picture Evaluation Task was a more appropriate task. Scores on the Picture Evaluation Task significantly correlated with reading achievement in Grade 1.. Further, first graders had significantly higher scores on the Picture Evaluation Task than kindergartners, while no age effect was found on the Reading Attitude Scale. Differences in correlations between kindergarten and Grade 1 suggest that less able students’ reading attitude is negatively affected by initial difficulties in learning to read.

Reading Achievement of Deaf Students: Challenging the Fourth Grade Ceiling.

Historically it has been reported that deaf students do not achieve age-appropriate outcomes in reading, with this performance often being characterized in terms of a fourth grade ceiling. However, given the shifts in the field during the past 20years (e.g., widespread implementation of newborn hearing screening, advances in hearing technologies), it would be timely to question whether this continues to serve as a meaningful benchmark. To this end, the purpose of this study was to investigate reading outcomes of a Canadian cohort of school-aged deaf learners (N = 70) who all used listening and spoken language as the primary mode of communication. Specifically, the goal was to establish whether their achievement approached that of their hearing age peers and to identify demographic factors influencing performance (i.e., gender, unilateral/bilateral hearing loss, personal amplification, level of auditory functioning, grade placement, additional disabilities, home language). Results indicate that participants obtained standard scores in the average range on both the Basic Reading and Reading Comprehension clusters of the Woodcock Johnson III-Diagnostic Reading Battery (Woodcock et al., 2004), surpassing the fourth grade reading achievement ceiling often reported for this population.

Kindergarten Teachers’ Ratings of Children’s Behavioral and Learning Competencies: Predictive Impact on Children’s Third and Fourth Grade Achievement Trajectories

Teachers’ valid observational assessments of children’s competencies in kindergarten are critical, as formal classroom testing is not prevalent. Controlling for SES and gender, hierarchical multiple regression was used to test the hypotheses that kindergarten teachers’ ratings of certain learning and behavioral competencies related to literacy, mathematics, and approaches to learning were predictive of third and fourth grade reading and mathematics achievement. Data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Class of 2010–2011 (ECLS-K:2011) were used for analyses. The ECLS-K:2011 sample included 12,866 children assessed at the end of kindergarten and who completed measures of academic achievement at the end of third and fourth grade. The hypothesized models suggested that the most basic literacy and mathematics competencies measured at the end of kindergarten along with approaches to learning are the most predictive of academic performance in third and fourth grade. Implications for teaching and learning in kindergarten were examined and discussed.

Kindergarteners’ spatial skills and their reading and math achievement in second grade

Children's early cognitive skills are believed to be associated with their later academic achievement and even lifelong success. Among various cognitive skills, spatial skills are considered a strong predictor of children's future math and reading performance. This study examined the relations between Chinese kindergarteners’ spatial skills and their subsequent math and reading achievement in second grade. Spatial skills (spatial perception, spatial visualization, and mental rotation), vocabulary, working memory, self-regulation ability, and academic competencies of 182 Chinese children were assessed in their last year of kindergarten. Follow up tests were then conducted on the children's academic competencies in math and reading in second grade. After controlling for demographics and a range of early domain-general and academic skill variables in a multilevel model, the unique associations between the children's early spatial skills and their academic achievement in second grade were assessed. The results showed that the children's spatial visualization ability in kindergarten was positively related to their math and reading performance in second grade. The children's spatial perception ability was also positively associated with their math performance in second grade. No association was found between early mental rotation and academic performance in second grade. Overall, the findings suggest that early spatial skills may have long-term effects on children's academic achievement in primary school. The effects need to be understood in the Chinese sociocultural context. The implications of the findings are discussed.

Predicting Literacy Development of Orally Trained Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children in Taiwan: A Two-Year Longitudinal Study.

Twenty-eight deaf and hard of hearing Chinese-speaking public school children in Taiwan were tested on literacy achievement tasks at the end of kindergarten (T1), first grade (T2), and second grade (T3) over 2 years. After nonverbal IQ and hearing threshold were controlled for, the results revealed that early oral vocabulary and print awareness tested in kindergarten were related to word recognition in first grade. Moreover, receptive oral vocabulary (T1) was related to reading achievement in first and second grade. Phoneme (onset-rime) blending (T1) was associated with reading achievement in first grade, but not second grade. While onset-rime blending made more unique contributions to picture-book reading comprehension (T2), oral receptive vocabulary contributed uniquely to reading comprehension in T3 more than onset-rime blending. The time (in minutes) per week parents spent in shared book reading with their child was moderately related to reading comprehension at T3.

Absenteeism across the Early Elementary Grades

Research suggests that elementary school absenteeism can contribute to deficits in achievement. It is less clear how the timing and growth in rates of attendance shape early elementary school achievement. The present study examined the role of absenteeism in pre-K and early elementary school in the context of third-grade achievement, along with differences based on gender and socioeconomic status. Aims were examined with a sample from an urban school district (N = 854). Overall, attendance rates were stable across early elementary school. Neither initial days attended nor changes over time were significantly associated with reading achievement in third grade for the sample as a whole. Among boys and low-income children, more days attended in pre-K was significantly associated with higher reading scores in third grade. Results are discussed in terms of early elementary attendance policies and practices for working with students who miss days of school.

Examining the Influence of Interactions Between Early Reading Skills and Executive Functioning on Second Grade Reading Achievement

Questions still exist about the interplay between foundational literacy components and budding cognitive structures that are thought to influence advanced reading abilities. Understanding interactions between executive functions (EFs) and specific early reading skills could contribute to our understanding of later reading achievement. The present study used multilevel modeling to examine whether EFs (i.e., working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibition) moderate the relation between various early reading skills in kindergarten and second grade reading achievement in a sample of 18,174 participants from the ECLS: K-2011 database. Our findings suggested that early teacher-rated reading skills are related to second grade reading abilities. Both working memory and inhibition were important moderators for reading independently in kindergarten and are associated with later reading achievement in second grade. Research implications and the importance of understanding the intersection of cognitive processes and learning in early childhood are discussed.

Patterns of heterogeneity in kindergarten children's executive function: Profile associations with third grade achievement

In the current study, we utilized latent profile analysis to investigate patterns of heterogeneity within children's executive function (EF) skills – as measured through direct assessments and as rated by teachers – that emerged within a large, national sample of kindergarten children (N = 10,770; Mage = 66.48 months, SD = 4.15). We then investigated whether these profiles predicted children's reading and mathematics achievement in third grade. Five unique profiles emerged from the data – representing groups with high, average, and low EF performance – as well as two groups with discordant performance across the direct assessments and teacher ratings. When predicting third grade achievement from latent class membership, performance on reading and math for both discordant groups was below that of the average-EF group. Findings demonstrate the importance of improving methods for identifying children who may be in need of extra support and may be overlooked when using solely linear-based analytic techniques.

Maternal depressive symptoms and children's cognitive development: Does early childcare and child's sex matter?

BackgroundMaternal depressive symptoms (MDS) have been associated with poorer child cognitive development. Some studies have shown that childcare attendance moderates associations between MDS and child behavior problems, but we do not know if this is the case for children’s cognitive development. Furthermore, few studies have evaluated whether associations between MDS and child cognitive development differ for boys and girls at school entry.MethodsThis study used data from a population-based cohort study (n = 1364) comprising well-validated measures of children’s cognitive development including academic readiness and language development in kindergarten and reading and mathematics achievement in first grade. Information on MDS was collected repeatedly from the child's age of 5 months to 5 years and on childcare from 5 months to 4.5 years. Moderation analyses were conducted to evaluate the differential associations of MDS with children’s outcomes depending on the type of childcare attended and the child’s sex.ResultsChildcare type or child’s sex did not moderate associations between MDS and children’s cognitive outcomes except for MDS being associated with lower scores on reading achievement in first grade for girls with a very small effect size (sr2 = .003). Childcare attendance was associated with higher scores for children’s cognitive development, however these associations disappeared after adjusting for covariates including child, mother and family characteristics. Regardless of MDS and childcare type, boys had, even after adjusting for covariates, lower scores on academic readiness (sr2 = .029) and higher scores on mathematics achievement (sr2 = .004).ConclusionsChildren’s cognitive development at school entry was more strongly associated with maternal education, children’s age in kindergarten and number of months of schooling in first grade than MDS. Contrary to associations between MDS and child behavior problems, childcare attendance did not moderate associations between MDS and children’s cognitive development at school entry.

The Home Literacy Environment in Rural Rwanda and Its Relationship to Early Grade Reading

ABSTRACTThe developing world faces a learning crisis, wherein children fail to master basic skills despite years of primary school attendance. The literature indicates that both in-school and at-home experiences impact children’s reading development, yet most developing world studies focus on children’s in-school experiences exclusively. This current study addresses this imbalance by exploring the home literacy environment in rural Rwanda and its relationship to children’s reading development. The data come from 466 parent surveys and 466 child reading assessments. An exploratory factor analysis of the survey data yields 5 distinct factors of the home literacy environment: family literacy and learning at home, parental competency in literacy, reading materials, child interest in literacy, and religious-related reading activities. Multivariate regression analyses reveal that family learning, parent competency, and child interest significantly predict early grade reading achievement. Implications of these findings for the developing world’s learning crisis are discussed.

Enhancing Outcomes for Struggling Readers: Empirical Analysis of The Fluency Development Lesson

This study investigated the efficacy of the Fluency Development Lesson (FDL) in improving reading achievement in primary grade struggling readers. 30 readers, enrolled in a summer reading clinic, participated in daily 40-min mini-reading lessons across 5 weeks. During the fluency lessons, readers practiced and developed their literacy skills through participation in repeated readings, word work, rehearsal, and performance. Assessments measured comprehension, reading fluency, including word recognition accuracy, reading speed, and prosody. Control students also took the pre- and post-intervention tests; their performance did not change with repeated testing. The Fluency Development Lesson students showed significant gains on all measures.

Does exuberance moderate the relation between effortful control at 54 months and first grade achievement? Interaction of a regulatory and a reactive temperament dimension

Past research has found that an important regulatory dimension of child temperament, effortful control, predicts child achievement. However, other dimensions of temperament may moderate the relation between effortful control and achievement. This study explored whether exuberance, a reactive temperament dimension, may moderate or compensate for low effortful control when predicting children’s reading and math achievement in first grade. Data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (n = 861) were used to test this hypothesis. The hypothesis was supported that for children with average or low exuberance, children’s effortful control positively predicted their reading achievement scores in first grade; whereas for children with high exuberance, children’s effortful control did not predict their reading achievement scores. Instead, highly exuberant children had high reading achievement scores regardless of their effortful control. Exuberance did not moderate the relation between effortful control and math achievement. Results suggest that children’s high exuberance compensates for poor effortful control when learning to read and that parents and teachers should explore strategies for channeling these children’s exuberance to support their academic growth.