Readers theater: techniques and educational applications

¶ … intervention to deal with the reading problems of a North Philadelphia classroom What the author will discuss first of all is the deficiencies of the Title 1 program itself. The we will examine the following issues:

a) Setting and Sample Population

b) Data Collection Procedures

c) Discussion of Action (Intervention)

The Federal Muddle

While it may seem academic, one must understand the limits of the Title 1 program itself. While Federal funding is allowed for the program, federally mandated curricula is not (" 20 usc," 2011). Unfortunately, the entire controversy was born in genius of bureaucratic overreach. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 explicitly forbids federally determined curricula. Indeed, the U.S. Constitution doe not authorize it either. In other words, the government threw money at the problem in the hope that it would increase Federal influence. Obviously, this was done, but in such a watered down manner that it would never invite a legal challenge in a federal court (Evers, 2000). In general, State authorities are loath to challenge the federal government for fear of losing funding. Unfortunately, our efforts are a patch, and not a total solution. We need therefore to seek out solutions that will work within the federal statute to intervene without jeopardizing federal funding.

Setting and Sample Demographic Population

The sample population constitutes a demographic made up of 100% African-American students with 20 students of which 12 are girls and 8 are boys. The institution is a Title 1 school. Essentially, the strategy at hand is to handle this as a situation where 100% of the class need to be assessed for learning disabilities to sort out those who can be helped with simple remedial measures and those who need Referrals for Intervention (RFIs) and/or a Behavioral Intervention Plan.

Data Collection Procedures

We can now consider ways that other schools have structured interventions and the data that they have collected to justify these actions and how they can remain within the standards. In the case of a Council for Exceptional Children Study where they made more individualized plans for students in a target demographic as a way to raise standards. In essence, what this author would be advocating is the use of the functional behavior assessment (FBA) might be used to justify an intervention to raise the reading level. In the study, the authors deemed the FBA as comparable to a Tier 3 assessment for reading. Simply here, instead of simply assessing reading ability, we would be using the FBA as a process to determine events that reliably predict and maintain behaviors of concern. As stated above, we will be using the FBA to sort out those who can be helped with simple remedial measures and those who need Referrals for Intervention (RFIs) and/or a Behavioral Intervention Plan. In the study of 10 individuals, more intensive function-based interventions were then individually developed and implemented. For each of these students, improvements in problem behaviors were observed and noted. The results suggest that a more intensive but efficient intervention was very effective in supporting the success of four students who were initially unresponsive to general classroom management practices (Fairbanks, Sugai, Guardino & Lathrop, 2007, 290 and 307). For this reason, the FBA would provide a good standard for data collection.

What skills should be measured in the FBA? In the Journal of Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, it was found that the components of effective reading instruction are the same regardless of whether the focus is prevention or awareness are phonemic awareness/phonemic decoding skills, spelling and writing, vocabulary and construction of meaning, text processing and construction of meaning. Findings from the research showed dramatic reductions in reading failure when these components are explicitly provided by the teacher. In this case, small-group and one on one reading instruction was effective (Foorman, 2001, 203).

In an article in the Journal of Educational Psychology, first and 2nd graders receiving Title I services were given 1 of 3 kinds of classroom reading programs, including direct instruction in letter-sound correspondences practiced in decodable text (direct code); implicit instruction in the alphabetic code while reading connected text (implicit code) and less direct instruction in systematic sound-spelling patterns embedded in connected text (embedded code). Children that received direct code instruction were found to have improved in their word reading at a faster rate and also had higher word-recognition skills than those receiving implicit code instruction. The effects of the instructional group on word recognition were reduced by the initial levels of phonological processing (Foorman, Francis, Fletcher, LaSchatschneiderst & Mehta, 1998, 51-52).

Additionally, they were the most apparent in children possessing poorer phonological processing skills initially. In such cases, group differences in reading comprehension paralleled those represented for word recognition but were less robust. However, the groups did not differ with regard to spelling achievement or vocabulary growth. The results demonstrated advantages for reading instructional programs that emphasize the need for explicit instruction in the alphabetic principle for the at-risk children in the classroom (ibid).