The purpose of this study was to examine and compare the effectiveness of teacher-directed instruction (i.e., teacher-directed instruction without using an iPad, TDI) and iPad-assisted instruction (IAI) on the word identification and oral reading fluency of elementary school students with reading learning disabilities (RLD), who have reading goals on their individual education plans (IEPs). Four 5th grade students with RLD participated in the study. An alternating treatments design combined with a multiple baseline design across the participants was applied. Visual analysis indicated that a moderate experimental effect from TDI and IAI on word identification and oral reading fluency was present for all four students when the baseline and intervention phases were compared. Specifically, regarding word identification, the percentage of non-overlapping data (PND) and non-overlap of all pairs (NAP) indicated that TDI and IAI are effective reading instructional procedures according to single-case research design standards. The finding was also supported by a Tau-U analysis that suggests both TDI and IAI demonstrated a large effect on improving word identification. Regarding oral reading fluency, however, the results were mixed; Tau-U indicates there was a large and significant effect from TDI and IAI for three of the four students in terms of increasing their oral reading fluency. Although data analysis indicates that TDI and IAI demonstrate moderate evidence in improving word identification and oral reading fluency, there was no clear differentiation found between the two treatments. A social validity questionnaire that examined student perspectives about intervention showed the students' positive views on their intervention experience and revealed their perspectives that intervention was helpful in building their reading skills. The second social validity questionnaire that asked the students about their reading perspectives indicated that the intervention increased their positive attitudes toward their reading (e.g., reading is a source of excitement and interest, reading is fun). / text

WORD READING STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT OF DEAF AND HARD-OF-HEARING PRESCHOOLERS by Victoria Burke Siegler’s (1996) overlapping waves model of strategy development applied to reading posits that children use multiple strategies to read words from the earliest stage of reading development, that these strategies coexist over a long period of time, and that experience results in gradual change in the strategies children use and the effectiveness with which they are executed. Phonological recoding is one of the most effective early developing reading strategies and is predictive of future reading success for hearing children (Ehri, 2005; Juel & Mindencupp, 2000; Share & Gur, 1999). However, less is known regarding the extent to which young children who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) develop and use phonological strategies to read words. Due to technological advances such as cochlear implants and digital hearing aids, many DHH children have sufficient functional hearing to be able to perceive and represent spoken language. For these children, beginning reading strategies may resemble those of hearing children (Geers, Tobey, Moog, & Brenner, 2008; Lederberg, Schick, & Spencer, in press). The purpose of this study was to describe changes in the word reading strategies of 15 DHH preschoolers with functional hearing. These children received explicit instruction in alphabetic knowledge, phonological awareness, and early reading strategies in a year-long intervention. Instruction was videotaped and children’s overt behavior while independently reading words was coded for reading strategy and accuracy. The preschoolers used multiple reading strategies at all times including two phonological recoding strategies (segmenting phonemes only, segmenting and blending phonemes) and retrieval. Gradual change was observed in strategy choice, execution, and accuracy. Children’s use of segmenting only decreased while segmenting and blending phonemes increased between the beginning and middle of the year. Retrieval use increased between the middle and end of the year. Execution of phonological strategies gradually improved over the year. These results suggest young DHH children who have functional hearing develop and use strategies in a manner similar to hearing children and benefit from explicit instruction in the alphabetic principle.

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Nicole Wilton is director of the Wilton Academy of Music in Saskatoon. LaShay Jennings is a clinical instructor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction (CUAI) at East Tennessee State University. Renee Rice Moran. Stacey Fisher, Huili Hong and Edward Dwyer are members of the faculty in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction (CUAI) at East Tennessee State University who have literacy strategies as their primary focus for research and instruction. According to these experts, instruction in learning the relationship between letters and the sounds they represent, phonics, is an important part of literacy instruction. Instantaneous recognition of onsets and rhymes as they appear in syllables is vital for fluent reading, and, consequently for reading comprehension. The systemic instructional strategies presented in this article describe effective, efficient and enjoyable approaches for providing phonics instruction in a variety of contexts. Emphasis is placed on learning relationships of onsets and rhymes through a set of instructional materials in the Word Builder Kit. These experts believe that hands-on enjoyable experiences involving multi-sensory approaches within academically sound practices benefit both teachers and students.

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Introduction: This thesis was submitted by Matthew Shardlow to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in the year 2015. Lexical simplification is the practice of automatically increasing the readability and understandability of a text by identifying problematic vocabulary and substituting easy to understand synonyms. This work describes the research undertaken during the course of a 4-year PhD. We have focused on the pipeline of operations which string together to produce lexical simplifications. We have identified key areas for research and allowed our results to influence the direction of our research. We have suggested new methods and ideas where appropriate. Objectives: We seek to further the field of lexical simplification as an assistive technology. Although the concept of fully-automated error-free lexical simplification is some way off, we seek to bring this dream closer to reality. Technology is ubiquitous in our information-based society. Ever-increasingly we consume news, correspondence and literature through an electronic device. E-reading gives us the opportunity to intervene when a text is too difficult. Simplification can act as an augmentative communication tool for those who find a text is above their reading level. Texts which would otherwise go unread would become accessible via simplification. Contributions: This PhD has focused on the lexical simplification pipeline. We have identified common sources of errors as well as the detrimental effects of these errors. We have looked at techniques to mitigate the errors at each stage of the pipeline. We have created the CW Corpus, a resource for evaluating the task of identifying complex words. We have also compared machine learning strategies for identifying complex words. We propose a new preprocessing step which yields a significant increase in identification performance. We have also tackled the related fields of word sense disambiguation and substitution generation. We evaluate the current state of the field and make recommendations for best practice in lexical simplification. Finally, we focus our attention on evaluating the effect of lexical simplification on the reading ability of people with aphasia. We find that in our small-scale preliminary study, lexical simplification has a nega- tive effect, causing reading time to increase. We evaluate this result and use it to motivate further work into lexical simplification for people with aphasia.