Remedial Reading Research Articles

Which Data Do Elementary School Teachers Use to Determine Reading Difficulties in Their Students?

Small-group interventions allow for tailored instruction for students with learning difficulties. A crucial first step is the accurate identification of students who need such an intervention. This study investigated how teachers decide whether their students need a remedial reading intervention. To this end, 64 teachers of 697 third-grade students from Germany were asked to rate whether a reading intervention for their students was “not necessary,” “potentially necessary,” or “definitely necessary.” Independent experimenters tested the students’ reading and spelling abilities with standardized tests, and a subsample of 370 children participated in standardized tests of phonological awareness and vocabulary. Findings show that teachers’ decisions with regard to students’ needing a reading intervention overlapped more with results from standardized spelling assessments than from reading assessments. Hierarchical linear models indicated that students’ spelling abilities, along with phonological awareness and vocabulary, explained variance in teachers’ ratings over and above students’ reading skills. Teachers thus relied on proximal cues such as spelling skills to reach their decision. These findings are discussed in relation to clinical standards and educational contexts. Findings indicate that the teachers’ assignment of children to interventions might be underspecified, and starting points for specific teacher training programs are outlined.

Reading in “Purgatory”: Tactical Literacies in a Remedial Reading Class

AbstractI detail findings from an ethnographic study of a high school remedial reading class, with a particular focus on students’ perceptions of what it means to be literate and how their mandatory enrollment in the course impacted their identities. Compounding students’ experiences was the existence of a high‐stakes reading examination that all students in the district must pass to graduate high school. Findings describe the contrast between school literacies that students learn in class and their own literate practices, which neither youth nor their teacher recognized as literacies, as well as the functioning of the remedial reading class as a sort of “purgatory” that holds and segregates students, the majority of whom are students of color and/or from marginalized socioeconomic backgrounds, for semesters on end. Still, students employed tactical literacies to subvert the teacher’s directives and reclaim their time. These findings suggest that common approaches to remediation may be a cause of youth disinterest in reading and that youth literacies may be leveraged in service of broader literacy goals, although the school must first acknowledge them.

Educational Epidemic: A Study of the Academic Underachievement of Luso-Canadians

The Luso-Canadian community has been subject to a multitude of unfortunate social injustices since the initial waves of mass migration between the 1950’s and 1970’s. A community which has historically contributed greatly to Canadian society, has been marginalized intergenerationally in both the academic and professional realms of Canadian society. The Luso-Canadian community, specifically in Toronto where the highest concentration resides, has historically been marked by high drop-out rates, overrepresentation in special education and remedial reading programs, and extremely low rates of post-secondary education. These barriers early in life have been identified by numerous sources as being the cause for various subsequent issues the Luso-Canadian community has faced including vast underrepresentation in other professional spheres of Canadian life. While numerous causes can be identified to explain the reasoning for these injustices, it is clear that legislative actions by the school boards and board of education must be taken to battle this issue and ensure that Luso-Canadians fulfill their full potential.

The Differential Responsiveness of Youth with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders and Learning Disabilities to Intensive Remedial Reading Instruction

This study examined the collective and differentiated effects of a remedial reading intervention, Corrective Reading Decoding Level B, on the reading skills and social adjustment of elementary and middle school students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) and learning disabilities (LD). Students were provided an average of three 40–45 min lessons per week over the course of nearly 4 months. Statistically significant reading skill improvements were found between students who received the intervention (n = 45) and those in the comparison condition (n = 23). The mean average basic reading skills of students with EBD (n = 10) improved from the low average range at pretest to the average range at posttest. Statistically significant differences were found between the posttest basic reading skills of students with EBD and their counterparts with LD (n = 35). Statistically significant reductions in the overall social adjustment problems and internalizing problems of participating students were found. The total problems of students with EBD moved from the clinical to the normal range at posttest. Except for performance on measures of oral reading fluency, students with EBD were significantly more responsive than their LD counterparts on measures of core reading skills, attention problems, ADHD Problems, and anxiety problems. Limitations, implications, and future research directions are discussed.

The role of semantic information in children’s word reading: Does meaning affect readers’ ability to say polysyllabic words aloud?

In an effort to improve oral reading, beginning and remedial reading programs in English focus on phonological awareness skills and recoding with grapheme–phoneme correspondences. The meanings of the words children practice reading aloud are given little emphasis. Some studies now suggest semantic knowledge may have a direct effect on children’s oral reading, but it is unclear whether it is due to knowledge of a given word, general semantic knowledge (vocabulary size), or morphological awareness. We asked third and fourth graders with reading difficulty and their typically achieving peers (N = 95) to read polysyllabic words (N = 48) in isolation. We tested children’s semantic knowledge for those specific words, general semantic knowledge (vocabulary size), morphological awareness, and orthographic and phonological knowledge. Using generalized linear mixed-effects models, we found a word-specific semantic effect—along with word-specific orthographic and phonological effects—and general effects of semantic knowledge, morphological awareness, and phonological awareness. The results add to the studies showing the importance of semantic information but is unique in clarifying that a general semantic effect may be at least partly morphological. The findings support a distributed processing account of reading acquisition in which readers use all reliable information to pronounce words, not only letter–sound consistencies. There may be implications for curriculum design. The word-specific semantic effect may suggest that beginning readers should practice reading words in their phonological lexicons. The general morphological effect suggests that children might benefit from learning morphological units early in their reading development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)

Dueling Narratives of a Reader Labeled as Struggling: Positioning, Emotion, and Power Within Four Differing English Course Contexts

Using theories of positioning, emotion, and power as a lens, this study explores the lived experiences of a reader labeled as struggling who was enrolled in four different course contexts: traditional high school English, high school remedial reading, high school Young Adult Literature, and college English. Interview data suggests the participant experienced two distinct narratives. Her discourse about the events in her traditional English and remedial reading courses reflects a disempowered positioning, and her discourse about the events in her high school Young Adult Literature and college English courses reflects an empowered positioning. Findings indicate that fostering a strong sense of power and positive emotions and positioning is a promising approach for supporting reader confidence and positive reading identities for readers labeled as struggling.

A Literature Review on Remedial Reading Teachers: The Gaps in the Philippine Context

Remedial reading teachers are forerunners in elevating the reading achievement of students in schools. In the Philippines, there has been a continual enrichment of the reading skills of struggling readers through the initiatives of remedial reading teachers. However, the country does not have clear policies on the identities, roles, challenges, and needs of such teachers. This paper presents a review of the literature on remedial reading teachers. The results revealed that remedial reading teachers performed various roles in schools and that the cultivation of the roles and duties of remedial reading teachers rely so much on different factors, some of which are knowledge and the skills that they have, philosophical views in education and the whole school community, the rapport that remedial reading teachers have with their colleagues, the support of the administrators to their personal and career developments, and provisions of the local government. It was also evident in the review that literature and studies are scarce regarding remedial reading teachers in the Philippines, thus, suggesting to explore on the what's and the how's of remedial reading teachers in a hope of creating clear policies that will strengthen their identities and support their professional developments.

Behavioral Engagement among Adolescents with Reading Difficulties: The Role of Active Involvement in a Universally Designed Digital Literacy Platform

We use the affordances of a supplemental digital literacy platform to study the dynamics of behavioral engagement and reading comprehension among middle-school students in remedial reading classes. All participating students (n = 315) were identified by their schools as needing additional reading support; 56% received special education services. They used the digital literacy platform designed using the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework for approximately 1 hr per week for an academic year. Embedded indicators of activity in the digital platform captured whether and how students engaged with available text-related activities. Higher levels of behavioral engagement were not associated with improved reading comprehension in the sample overall. An interaction effect indicated that students who started the year with lower reading comprehension skills were likely to benefit more from higher reading-related behaviors and more use of text-to-speech than those starting with relatively higher comprehension skills.

Providence

100 THIRII MYO KYAW MYINT Providence  ast Bay Bike Path and the trees rise before us like a dark wave. Beyond them, there is the gazebo and the pale bodies of the vacationers ’ drowned children. The girl children we have named Veronica or Madeline. The boy children George or Richard. We park our bikes at the water’s edge and continue down the Path on foot. The night is balmy. The city sparkles in the distance and I can make out the power plant, the jewelry factories, and the strip clubs. We enter the line of trees. Our pockets are filled with bread to feed the dead children. Maya’s hair is pulled back from her temples and it falls to her shoulders in tight, dark curls. She is so beautiful it makes me sad. She look like a princess. The trees reach for our ankles as we walk because the forest is enchanted. I look up and see naked girls hanging by their hair from the highest branches. I recognize some of them. They came through the school where I teach. Some of the girls are still alive. The air is green and shiny inside the forest and I nearly trip on a creeping root. If I fall, the trees will hang me up too. I am more careful where I step. After some time, we reach the clearing, the gazebo, and the bridge to the vacationers’ house. The house is white, enormous. The moon is full. I dig my hands into my pockets for the bread and break off some pieces. Maya takes off her soft shoes and dips her toes in the water. In the moonlight, her skin is dark blue. She draws circles in the water with her toes and begins to talk of her cousin who killed himself, her white cousin, the son of her mother’s sister. He heard the voices of angels, Maya says. I toss pieces of bread into the water and watch them sink. I think I see the silver skin of the dead children beneath the water’s surface. When her cousin died, Maya says, they found his hoard of angels and demons. Little figurines that filled every drawer. He must have been collecting them for years. I sit down beside Maya on the bank and look at our reflection in the water. We sit close together. The water is very still. e 101 Maya hasn’t touched her bread at all, so I remark on this and she stops the story she was telling me of her cousin’s suicide. How he drowned himself in a frozen lake. She takes the bread out of her coat pocket and tosses the whole loaf into the water. We hear a loud splash. We wait to see if the children will wake up. The vacationers came late last spring when the city was in bloom, when the air was heavy with the scent of magnolia and wet earth. Spring is the most beautiful season in this city. The ice on the sidewalks melts in layers and for a few days I can see the colorful leaves from last fall encased under my feet. The vacationers’ house along the East Bay Bike Path is built like a castle. It stands on a rock in the water. The gazebo stands on a smaller rock closer to the path and between the house and the gazebo is a wooden bridge. The house is only accessible by boat. I imagine the vacationers built their house where they did because it is important to have privacy on a vacation, and also because they were afraid to die. There are parts of this city where people die every day. At the school where I teach remedial reading there is a poster on the front office door of all the children who have gone missing and are probably dead. Down the hall, there is another poster of all the local men who are convicted sex offenders. The staff is made to memorize the first poster, and the children the second. The East Bay Bike Path begins at India Point Park. Ships from the colonies once sailed to India from...

On being a pathologist: a pathway to pathology practice; the added value of supplemental vocational training and mentoring in college and medical school

Traditionally, vocational training and liberal arts (and premedical) curricula have been separate education tracks. This personal profile describes a program that evolved from the partial fusion of vocational training and a premedical education track. My personal health issue, visual impairment, which presumably resulted as a complication of congenital toxoplasmosis, hampered my ability to read in grammar school and necessitated my placement in remedial reading classes until eighth grade. My father created an independent home-based vocational training program that ran in parallel to my traditional school education all the way through college. In this case study, I provide an overview of this hybrid education program, which we refer to as the Vocational Training/Medical College Curriculum of the Future (VTMC). This term implies that the education of a student from K-12 school through medical college is a continuum. I find it useful to conceptualize a single education continuum beginning with vocational training and ending with medical education, with a large overlap area in the middle. In this paper, I describe a set of my work experiences that leveraged and reinforced my didactic education experiences. Mentors who supported aspects of the VTMC program have included a college president, a US Congressman, a Nobel Laureate, and a Massachusetts General Hospital leader in academic pathology. Elements of this innovative VTMC program have been used in K-12 public schools and in nonmedical graduate school programs.

Examination of the Implementation of Mastery Learning in Remedial Reading Activities: Program for Students With Low Reading Ability in Chicago in the 1970s

Examination of the Implementation of Mastery Learning in Remedial Reading Activities: Program for Students With Low Reading Ability in Chicago in the 1970s

Effects of a positive youth development approach to literacy through young adult literature in the secondary remedial reading class: an action research study

The purpose of this action research study was to determine if a bibliotological approach to literacy with at-risk students met the educational expectations of a remedial reading course while simultaneously accelerating literacy practices and promoting positive youth development. Twenty-four tenth grade students enrolled in a remedial reading course in the southwestern USA participated in a nine-week instructional design that utilized young adult literature as a medium through which to practice literacy skills and strategies while exploring positive youth development simultaneously. Measurement protocols included diagnostic assessments of reading, surveys, Likert-scale inventories, and journals as a way of eliciting students’ voices. Data was analyzed through paired t-tests, Bonferroni Correlation, and typological and inductive coding. Through this approach, all students experienced an increase in self-efficacy, which led to positive youth development and growth in literacy proficiency and practices. Suggestions for future research include the study of this approach in multiple remedial contexts, with multiple young adult texts, and for greater lengths of time. Additionally, a follow-up inquiry to determine potential lasting impact is warranted.

Critical Literacy and Our Students’ Lives

The US West Outstanding Teacher of the Western United States for 1990 discusses here how winning the award only led her to recognize the ways she needed to improve instruction in her classroom of students who were seen as “disadvantaged” because they were remedial readers, mostly impoverished, and largely African American. By focusing on the passions and skills her students already had, the author was able to create a sancocho (thick stew)-style curriculum with a basic process that helps students see their experiences in the context of the larger world.

The effects of age and sublexical automaticity on reading outcomes for students with reading disabilities

For students with reading disabilities, reading fluency has proven difficult to remediate. The current study examined age‐related effects on measures of word and text‐reading outcomes, within the context of a phonologically based remedial reading program. The contribution of speeded‐reading of sublexical sound–spelling patterns to fluency outcomes was also examined. The youngest group of participants showed better outcomes on measures of word and pseudoword reading. All age groups made significant and meaningful improvements on measures of reading fluency and reading comprehension. Participants' mastery of speeded, sublexical sound–spelling reading contributed variance to fluency outcomes beyond pre‐intervention fluency scores. Practice with sublexical spelling patterns may be one important component of programs directed at remediating accuracy and fluency deficits for students with reading disabilities.What is already known about this topic Reading fluency has proven difficult to remediate for students with reading disabilities. Training with sublexical sound–spelling patterns has increased recognition of the trained patterns, but transfer has been limited. Young children with reading difficulties appear to have an advantage at closing the reading achievement gap; however, there are some inconsistencies in the literature. What this paper adds Automaticity with sublexical patterns made a unique contribution to fluency outcomes in this sample of students with reading disabilities. In the context of the reading program examined, all age groups made significant and meaningful standard score gains on reading fluency. Young children did not score higher than the two older groups on measures of oral reading fluency or reading comprehension; bringing into question conclusions drawn from prevention versus intervention studies. Implications for theory and practice Findings lend support to models of reading acquisition that emphasize multilayered, sublexical spelling–sound knowledge as important to reading fluency, beyond that of sight‐word reading efficiency. Including speeded practice of a broad range of sublexical sound–spelling patterns and training these to mastery deserves further study as one potential approach to improving fluency interventions for students with reading disabilities. We suggest that this sublexical training may mimic reading practice in terms of building orthographic representations that support fluent reading.

Re-inventing Remedial Reading in the 21st Century: A Review of the Benefits and Challenges of a Hybrid Remedial Reading Course


 
 
 Remedial courses have been the center of attention over the past decade. More students enter college and take at least one remedial course because they have failed the entrance exams that determine if students have the basic skills to take credit bearing courses. The increase in enrollment for these courses has left administrators to find other sources and programs to accelerate the process. Students who are not accelerated through the remedial courses are sometimes left with taking more than one remedial in a semester. This setback can potentially delay the student’s matriculation and eventually cause the student to drop out of college. This paper examines a first year pilot hybrid remedial reading course offered in the Fall of 2015. Further, this small-scale study illustrates the benefits and effects of a hybrid remedial reading course and provides future recommendations for achievement. Using qualitative and quantitative data, the hybrid remedial reading course was determined to provide positive outcomes when comparing the treated and non-treated groups. It was further observed that the students found the course to be innovative and spark their interests. The promise of a new alternative to remedial reading in the 21st century has the potential to boost student attainment, matriculation, and progress.
 
 

Teacher candidates' mastery of phoneme-grapheme correspondence: massed versus distributed practice in teacher education.

Matching phonemes (speech sounds) to graphemes (letters and letter combinations) is an important aspect of decoding (translating print to speech) and encoding (translating speech to print). Yet, many teacher candidates do not receive explicit training in phoneme-grapheme correspondence. Difficulty with accurate phoneme production and/or lack of understanding of sound-symbol correspondence can make it challenging for teachers to (a) identify student errors on common assessments and (b) serve as a model for students when teaching beginning reading or providing remedial reading instruction. For students with dyslexia, lack of teacher proficiency in this area is particularly problematic. This study examined differences between two learning conditions (massed and distributed practice) on teacher candidates' development of phoneme-grapheme correspondence knowledge and skills. An experimental, pretest-posttest-delayed test design was employed with teacher candidates (n = 52) to compare a massed practice condition (one, 60-min session) to a distributed practice condition (four, 15-min sessions distributed over 4weeks) for learning phonemes associated with letters and letter combinations. Participants in the distributed practice condition significantly outperformed participants in the massed practice condition on their ability to correctly produce phonemes associated with different letters and letter combinations. Implications for teacher preparation are discussed.

Executive Functions Contribute Uniquely to Reading Competence in Minority Youth

Competent reading requires various skills beyond those for basic word reading (i.e., core language skills, rapid naming, phonological processing). Contributing “higher-level” or domain-general processes include information processing speed and executive functions (working memory, strategic problem solving, attentional switching). Research in this area has relied on largely Caucasian samples, with limited representation of children from racial or ethnic minority groups. This study examined contributions of executive skills to reading competence in 761 children of minority backgrounds. Hierarchical linear regressions examined unique contributions of executive functions (EF) to word reading, fluency, and comprehension. EF contributed uniquely to reading performance, over and above reading-related language skills; working memory contributed uniquely to all components of reading; while attentional switching, but not problem solving, contributed to isolated and contextual word reading and reading fluency. Problem solving uniquely predicted comprehension, suggesting that this skill may be especially important for reading comprehension in minority youth. Attentional switching may play a unique role in development of reading fluency in minority youth, perhaps as a result of the increased demand for switching between spoken versus written dialects. Findings have implications for educational and clinical practice with regard to reading instruction, remedial reading intervention, and assessment of individuals with reading difficulty.

Evaluation of the effectiveness of remedial reading courses at community colleges

ABSTRACTLimited research is available on the effectiveness of remedial college courses. The present study evaluated the effectiveness of two instructional approaches for developmental reading courses at a community college in the southwestern United States. The instructional approaches were traditional textbook-based instruction and strategic-reading instruction. The sample consisted of 64 participants. Half (n = 32) of the participants were in the control group (n = 32) and received traditional textbook-based instruction; the other half (n = 32) were in the experimental group and received strategic-reading instruction. All participants completed the Nelson-Denny Reading Form G at the beginning of the semester and then again 12 weeks later, at the end of the semester. The data were then statistically analyzed to identify any relationships between the type of instruction and the differences between the students’ pretest and posttest scores. The null hypotheses for H1 and H2 were rejected because the results of the paired t tests indicated that both traditional textbook-based instruction and strategic-reading instruction have a statistically significant positive effect on students’ performance on the test. A one-way ANOVA was conducted to determine whether the pretest/posttest difference scores varied based on the type of instruction. The findings showed that both methods of instruction were equally effective in improving the reading comprehension skills of community college students in a developmental reading course. Based on the findings, community college leaders are encouraged to assess the effectiveness of the instructional methods used in developmental courses to ensure at-risk community college students are receiving the most beneficial instruction.

Effects of Planning and Goal Setting on Reducing Latency to Task Engagement for Struggling Readers in Middle School

The current study examined the effect of a planning and goal-setting intervention in reducing latency to task engagement. This study used a multiple baseline design across participants for two seventh-grade and two eighth-grade students in a remedial reading class. The behavioral intervention was administered in small groups at the start of each class period. Latency for transitions was mea- sured from the conclusion of teacher directions to the initiation of assigned aca- demic tasks. Results showed the implementation of the intervention was closely associated with immediate decreases in latency to task engagement. The interven- tion reduced the mean latency to task engagement for all participants and reduced the variability over baseline. Visual analysis indicate a functional relation between the intervention and changes in latency. Implications for results and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Effects of Online Reciprocal Teaching on Reading Strategies, Comprehension, Self-Efficacy, and Motivation

This study examines the effects of two types of online remedial reading interventions on the reading strategy and comprehension, motivational beliefs, and self-efficacy of 36 low-achieving students (explicit teaching before reciprocal teaching [ET-RT] vs. direct instruction [DI]). We designed a 10-unit online remedial English reading program based on the theoretical framework of the ET-RT model developed by Palincsar and associates. The study investigates the patterns of teacher modeling in both groups and interactive dialogue in the ET-RT group. Students' experiences and perceptions of reading interventions are also explored. The study reveals that implementing ET-RT significantly improved student reading comprehension and strategies and self-efficacy compared with DI. Triangulation with a survey indicated that ET-RT instruction reduced learners' anxiety about learning English and increased interest in reading. Moreover, the ET-RT learners had a better command of reading strategies than the DI learners. However, the qualitative evaluation of learner performance revealed that both groups showed moderate satisfaction and that most students accepted the interventions. ET-RT learner excerpts highlight the importance and usefulness of explicit reading strategy instruction. These findings indicate that both ET-RT and DI instruction have value. However, the finding that ET-RT outperformed DI suggests the need to reconsider the design and implementation of remedial English reading instruction.