Thesis advisor: David Scanlon / Students' with moderate special needs learning difficulties often manifest as reading struggles. These students commonly struggle with decoding words because of weak phonics skills, limited automatic recognition of high frequency words and/or limited vocabulary. A further challenge for the struggling readers is to focus on comprehension while decoding. Given that these students reading comprehension and fluency generally do not improve commensurate with reading demands as they move through school, exploring other possibilities such as the use of theatre arts techniques to teach English/Language Arts may identify an alternative intervention that builds comprehension and fluency in academic reading. Through my experience as a teacher I have used theatre in the classroom as a teaching and motivational tool. This study was conducted using a multiple case study design accompanied by the teacher researcher's perspective on the impact of the theatre infused curriculum. This dissertation focuses on the effect of a reading comprehension and fluency curriculum infused with theatre techniques on students' with moderate special needs literacy engagement, fluency, and comprehension. Informing this study is empirical research on teaching reading comprehension and fluency to students with moderate disabilities, as well as empirical research on the use of theatre techniques in curriculum. Data included reading performances and outcomes, observations of students, a teacher reflection journal, and student interviews. Thematic analysis was used to develop codes to inform the study's major themes. The study has four main findings: study participants who put in the most effort increased their comprehension score, all study participants, regardless of their reading levels or reading rates on the pre-test, made improvements on both by the end of the nine week study, writing assignments in the character analysis and skit writing activities require longer periods of exposure for the study participants to master them, and performing builds confidence over time, in a supportive environment. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BOSTON/oai:dlib.bc.edu:bc-ir_101829 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Hughes, Valencia Z.H. |
| Publisher | Boston College |
| Source Sets | Boston College |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, thesis |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. |
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