Low-Performing Readers Are at Risk for Being

Low-performing readers are at risk for being "caught in a cycle of failure," (Collins, 2000, p. 1). It is therefore important to discover and implement a wide variety of interventions as early as possible, to address the needs of individual students in a strategic way. E-readers offer a promising method that can supplement a variety of instructional strategies and the tools used to deliver them. Yet in spite of the great promise e-readers offer to teachers and students, "the use of e-readers for academic reading remains understudied," (Thayer, et al. 2011).

As a graduate student, I would like to investigate the efficacy of including e-readers into the instructional strategies used with low-performing readers. Existing research does show that e-readers do offer low-performing readers and their instructors the opportunity to increase motivation as well as improve fluency levels. In fact, students with various types of reading and learning disabilities benefit when technology is used to "promote their literacy learning," (King-Sears, et al. 2011).

Guiding research questions include how language retention and literacy fluency develops when e-readers are used either in conjunction with or instead of printed materials. I would also be interested in whether there are patterns among students who are given the choice of using e-readers or printed texts. Do some students prefer printed texts and respond to them better than to e-readers, and if so, why? During the course of the research, it will be critical to work with a number of different applications designed specifically for reading instruction.

Ideally, a wide variety of teaching methods and materials including e-readers will be used to help low-performing readers. For example, keeping content relevant to student interests helps stimulate motivation and improve comprehension and retention (Collins, 2000). The content embedded in e-readers, coupled with the reading-related games and software applications, will be critical in determining the progress of the student's reading performance. Are some e-readers more ergonomically suitable than others, and which applications prove more effective in teaching low performance readers? For example, King-Sears, et al. (2011) examine the TECH program.

Tutoring has also been shown to be an effective strategy for low performing readers, who benefit from an abundance of repetition designed with the express goals of passage comprehension, word recognition, and more rapid processing (Begeny & Martens, 2006). Given this, tutors could use e-readers in creative ways that help the learner practice independently as well as with the tutor. Ultimately the low performing reader aims for automaticity in reading (Begeny & Martens, 2006). Automaticity should improve over time when students become more committed to a concerted program of reading.

If e-readers are fun as well as easy to use, then low performance readers may be increasingly motivated to practice the skills needed to achieve the goal of automaticity and fluency. E-readers are no panacea for low performance readers, of course. For instance, one limitation of e-readers is the " hindrance of the human ability to construct cognitive maps of texts when using e-readers," (Thayer et al. 2011). Furthermore, e-readers are not necessarily more effective a method of improving reading comprehension vs. printed text material (Wright, Fugett & Caputa, 2013).

Therefore, my research would focus on the use of e-readers to improve automaticity and fluency among the lowest 15% of school-aged children, including those diagnosed with learning disabilities. It is my hypothesis that e-readers help with the elements of reading that predate comprehension: namely, motivation/interest in reading; vocabulary retention; word recognition; and grammatical structures.

Technology can certainly help low performing readers achieve automaticity bother by the fact of the technology itself being novel and/or appealing to the learner, and also by the fact that the technology diversifies the range of methods and materials used to deliver lessons. According to Edmunds (2008), the most effective teachers use technology with low performing readers in strategic ways to target their instruction more effectively and personalize material, as well as to diversify strategies.

In my research, I hope to better understand where e-readers fit in with the teacher's overall toolkit for addressing the needs of low performance readers. Moreover, technology permits the instructor to regularly interact with the student in new and potentially constructive ways, while also motivating student involvement and responsiveness to lessons and reading content. E-readers particularly "facilitate remediation and reinforcement…increase access to resources," motivate students, and "meet the needs of the whole child," (Edmunds, 2008, p. 1).

In addition to their obvious relevance as individualized instructional devices, e-readers can also be harnessed as classroom tools that foster cooperative learning. Like Edmunds (2008), several researchers have found that one of the greatest strengths of e-readers is their ability to motivate students. Wright, Fugett & Caputa (2013) found that reading comprehension and vocabulary retention are the same whether students are using print or e-text, but that students are much more likely to use reading resources when they are engaged with digital text. Likewise, Doiron (2011) emphasizes.