Next Steps

Question: What are the effects that phonemic awareness and phonics instruction in a targeted intervention group will have on student’s oral reading fluency?

Overview of Research

• As stated by Wasik (2001), “Phonemic awareness is the ability to auditorily recognize and manipulate individual sounds in words” (p. 128).
• Phonemic awareness lends to students the ability to understand the units of words and focus on segmenting and blending those sounds to make sense of the words they read.
• This gives students the ability to being able to read fluently which leads to a greater understanding and comprehension of the text.
• For my research I will be implementing the Read Well program.

Big Idea #1

Big Idea #1

• The ultimate goal of reading instruction is for students to be able to comprehend what they are reading.
• Reading comprehension is the result of fluent reading, and fluent reading is the result of students being able to decode words accurately and fluently.

Big Idea #1 Cont.

• Hudson, Lane and Pullun (2005) report that students comprehend when they are able to read fluently, they read fluently when they are able to read accurately, they read accurately when they are able to decode and recognize words, and they are able to decode and recognize words when they have a “Strong understanding of the alphabetic principle, the ability to blend sounds together” (Ehri & McCormick, 1998, as cited by Hudson, Lane & Pullun, 2005, p. 703).

Big Idea #2

Big Idea #2

• According to Freebody and Byrne (1988), a student’s ability to decode words depends on their phonemic awareness.
• Their research concluded, that while some students with decoding skills may be slower in their reading, they are more careful, leading to less errors and a better comprehension of what was read, whereas the students who depended on sight-words “obstructs general reading improvement” (p. 451).

Big Idea #3

Big Idea #3

• A study conducted by Browder, Ahlgrim-Dezell, Flowers, and Baker (2012) showed that students with disabilities who were provided reading instruction following the essential skills in reading (vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, phonemic awareness, and phonics) showed growth in their reading abilities as opposed to students with sight-word instruction.
• After three years of study, 79% of students mastered one or more reading levels, and 17 students made the transition to a higher reading program.

What's Next?

Next Steps

• More research!!!!
• Send home letter of consent to student's parents
• Develop data collection methods; i.e. pre/post tests, weekly fluency assessments, etc.

Things to Consider:

• What will the size be of my groups?
• How do I best group students?
• More research on reading program.
• Expand on what targeted intervention is and entails
• How will I collect and compare data?
• How are student needs in the Tier I and II interventions being addressed?
• More research to support the importance of phonemic awareness and phonics instruction for students struggling to read

What to search for:

• "small group intervention"
• "targeted intervention"
• "phonemic awareness"
• "phonics instruction"
• "phonics intervention"
• Read Well reading program

I will continue to search for peer reviewed research articles through Search@CILibraries and other online databases

I will talk to others at my school about other RTI methods being used.

Conclusion

• For the remainder of my research, I plan on implementing the Read Well program and collecting data on student's Oral Reading Fluency.
• I will devise a research participation letter of request and send home to parents.
• I will continue to research using online databases to support my hypothesis and research question.
• I will develop methods for data collection.

References