Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

There is a wide gap between current understandings of how readers read and how reading is taught in school, particularly to "at-risk" readers. Contemporary reading research and reader-response theories suggest that struggling readers should not be subjected to remedial programs involving "drills and skills," simplified "decodable" reading material, and most of all, low expectations of their teachers. Reading problems are not solved by filling gaps in a child's knowledge or skills. Instead, reluctant readers must be treated as readers, encouraged to develop their personal interests and enthusiasms through reading, and, most importantly, to make their own sense of their reading. By helping my students to read and respond to texts rich in content and appropriate to their interests and ages, I observed significant improvement in their confidence and competence as readers. / This teacher-research study describes the growth of four readers in grade-seven with long histories of failure in school. Their stories are told in case studies that contain descriptions of the classroom activities and events that influenced their progress, observations of their interactions with their peers and with me, their teacher, and finally, analyses of their work samples. This work is also about my role in my students' development and, thus, includes my reflections on how I transformed both reading and reader-response theory into practice and on relevant features of my classroom management. In the case study of each student, I have tried to capture their different learning styles and problems and also my thinking processes that arose from the beliefs, questions, observations, reflections, hunches, and flashes of insight that I, like most teachers, used daily and that formed the substance of my reader-based pedagogy. In addition, I discuss in detail the ideas in the research literature, such as reader-response theory and the whole language/phonics debate, that help to explain my students' progress. / As a teacher-researcher, I describe my teaching, as well as its effects on my students. Through understanding struggling readers, I came to understand reading. This is an account of my learning that delineates the nature of the interactions between teacher and students which is, in fact, the real curriculum of any classroom. An essential part of teaching is evaluating its effectiveness; this dissertation is a sustained evaluation of my reading program through four of my students' responses to it during one and, in two cases, two school years.

There is no abstract available for this dissertation.

There is no abstract available for this dissertation.

There is no abstract available for this dissertation.

The present study investigated the effects of a specially designed remedial reading program consisting of intensive training sessions which emphasized the direct instruction of vocabulary skills by the use of context clue or by structural analysis and dictionary usage using individual teaching techniques rather than group teaching techniques on the comprehension skills of potential school dropouts. The subjects in this experimental study were grade eight students from a junior secondary school. They were divided into three categories: (1) comprehension and vocabulary scores the same as or less than grade 6.0; (2) comprehension score the same as or less than grade 6.0; but vocabulary score the same as or greater than grade 6.0; and (3) vocabulary score the same as or less than grade 6.0; but comprehension score the same as or greater than grade 6.0. Thirty-six subjects were identified on the basis of these criteria. Each subject in each of the three categories was assigned to one of three treatment conditions at random. They received four treatment lessons; forty minutes each over a period of four weeks. The instructional materials were worksheets prepared by the experimenter. Each subject was given the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test, Survey E, Form 1, The School Interest Inventory; a pre- and post- paper-pencil Comprehension Test "X", and a common transfer task which consisted of a reading selection and comprehension questions constructed by the experimenter. The findings of this experimental study indicate that the treatment effects observed in terms of the number of correct responses on the transfer task with acquired vocabularies were not significant. The treatment effects in terms of the time in minutes to the completion of the transfer task with acquired vocabularies were significant indicating that the treatment with the use of contextual clues was particularly effective to those subjects in Category 3. Both the treatments with the use of contextual clues and structural analysis with dictionary usage were effective to Category 3 subjects who were lacking in vocabulary skills when the kind of transfer comprehension test with acquired vocabularies via four sessions of treatment were given. The analysis of performance on the transfer test with new vocabularies indicates that the remedial treatments as compared to the non-remedial control treatment are significant. The treatment with the use of contextual clues is no more effective than the treatment with the use of structural analysis with dictionary usage. The treatment effects on comprehension were interpreted on the results of the significant practice effects observed over four exposure treatments. These suggest that extended treatments of the kinds used in the present study would have shown significant remedial training effects via the use of contextual clues in the training of vocabulary skills. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

It was the purpose of this study (1) to present to the College of the Pacific a written record of the history of the Laura Ann Sisk Memorial Reading Clinic since its inception; (2) to trace its growth in scope and philosophy by portraying past and present methods and techniques employed; (3) to analyze the results of clinic practices which were obtained systematically; and (4) to discuss the future plans for the development of the clinic

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.