C.A.J. Aarnoutse

Development of decoding, reading comprehension, vocabulary and spelling during the elementary school years

The goal of this study was (1) to investigate the development of decoding(efficiency), reading comprehension, vocabulary and spelling during theelementary school years and (2) to determine the differences between poor,average and good performers with regard to the development of theseskills. Twice each year two standardized tests for each skill wereadministered. For two successive periods, one of the tests for each skill wasthe same. To describe the development in terms of a latent variable evolvingacross grades, the structured-means version of the structural equationmodel was used. The growth was expressed in terms of effect size. Withrespect to the first question, clear seasonal effects were found for readingcomprehension, vocabulary and spelling, while the seasonal effect fordecoding efficiency was restricted to the early grades. Progress tended tobe greater from fall to spring than from spring to fall. For decodingefficiency, and to a lesser degree for vocabulary and spelling, growthshowed a declining trend across grades. For reading comprehension, theprogress in grade 2 was lower than the progress in grade 3, but progresswas declining across higher grades. With respect to the second question,it appeared that initially low performers on reading comprehension,vocabulary and spelling tended to show a greater progress, especially inperiods where the largest amount of instruction was given. Although it wasfound that the low, medium and high ability groups remain in the sameorder, as far as their means are concerned, these findings do not confirmthe existence of a Matthew effect for reading comprehension, vocabularyand spelling. For decoding efficiency no clear differential effect could befound: the gap between the poor and good performers did not widen overtime for this skill.

Learning reading strategies by triggering reading motivation

In this article, the effectiveness of an intervention aimed at the development of reading motivation and reading strategies within problem-oriented learning environments is evaluated. The basic assumption underlying the intervention is that reading should occur in meaningful contexts and that reading and science should be regularly integrated. The intervention challenges pupils to investigate a self-formulated problem, read several books or texts on the topic and report the results of their study. The participants were six experimental third-grade classes and seven comparable control classes. The effects of the intervention were measured using a pretest-posttest control group design. Analyses of covariance were conducted to examine the effects as measured by a standardized Reading Comprehension Test, a Reading Comprehension Questionnaire, a Reading Strategy Test and a Reading Motivation Scale. The results showed the experimental group to outperform the control group with regard to knowledge of reading strategies (Reading Comprehension Questionnaire) and the use of such strategies (Reading Strategy Test). A significant difference in favour of the experimental group was also found for the Reading Motivation Scale. An effect on the standardized Reading Comprehension Test was not found.

Early Literacy From a Longitudinal Perspective

The goal of this longitudinal study was to examine which skills in early literacy determine the development of word recognition, reading comprehension, and spelling in the 2nd grade of the elementary school. A cohort of pupils was followed and tested during the 2nd year of kindergarten and the beginning of the 1st and 2nd grade. It appeared that mainly 2 skills determined the development of word recognition: rapid naming of letters and knowledge of letters. Reading comprehension was predicted to a large extent by vocabulary, rapid naming of letters, letter knowledge, and phonemic awareness. The skills that determined the development of spelling were rapid naming of numbers and letter knowledge.

Effects of an Instructional Programme for Deriving Word Meanings 1

Summary The effects of an instructional programme for deriving word meanings from the context and through morphological analysis for grade 4 primary‐school pupils with poor versus average reading comprehension were examined. The programme is based on the principles of direct instruction and reciprocal teaching. A pre‐test‐post‐test control group design was used to measure the effects of the programme. The results showed the programme to have a significant positive effect on the ability of the pupils to derive word meanings. Transfer of this ability to more general reading comprehension was not, however, found to occur. Finally, the readers for whom the programme is primarily intended, namely poor reading comprehenders, were found to benefit more from the training than average reading comprehenders. 1 This article is a modified version of ‘Effecten van een instructie programma voor het afleiden van woordbetehenissen’ which will appear in Pedagogische studien, Vol. 75, No. 1, 1998.

Phonological Awareness and Naming Speed in the Prediction of Dutch Children's Word Recognition.

Influences of phonological awareness and naming speed on the speed and accuracy of Dutch childrens word recognition were investigated in a longitudinal study. The speed and accuracy of word recognition at the ends of Grades 1 and 2 were predicted by naming speed from both the beginning and end of Grade 1, after control for autoregressive relations, kindergarten letter knowledge, and vocabulary knowledge. Phonological awareness at the beginning of Grade 1 predicted only the accuracy of word recognition at the end of Grade 1. No evidence was found for reciprocal influences of word recognition skills on later phonological awareness or naming speed.

Spelling and word recognition in Grades 1 and 2: Relations to phonological awareness and naming speed in Dutch children

The influences of early phonological awareness and naming speed on Dutch childrens later word spelling were investigated in a longitudinal study. Phonological awareness and naming speed predicted spelling in early Grade 1, later Grade 1, and later Grade 2. Phonological awareness, however, predominated over naming speed for the prediction of early Grade 1 spelling. Comparison of the present results with those from an earlier study of childrens word recognition using the same dataset and also structural equation modeling showed word recognition speed at the ends of Grades 1 and 2 in the earlier study to be uniquely predicted by early naming speed. Nonetheless, naming speed may measure almost the same in word recognition and word spelling accuracy.

Improving reading comprehension strategies through listening

Summary The goal of this study was to determine whether it is possible to teach children with serious decoding problems four text comprehension strategies in listening contexts. The subjects were 9-11 year old students from special schools for children with learning disabilities. All the students were very poor at decoding; half of the group were also poor listeners, whereas the other half consisted of normal listeners. The experimental children were trained in strategies of clarifying, questioning, summarising and predicting through a combination of reciprocal teaching and direct instruction. The results indicated significant programme effects on a strategic listening comprehension test. A transfer effect on general listening comprehension and general reading comprehension tests was not found. The poor listeners within the experimental group did not perform better than the normal listeners.

Monitoring pupil development by means of the Kalman filter and smoother based upon SEM state space modeling

If test scores are collected from an individual pupil at different points in time and a state-space model is available for describing latent ability development over time, the Kalman filter and smoother turn out to be the optimal procedures for estimating the pupils latent curves. The Kalman filter is implemented in the Nijmegen Pupil Monitoring System, LISKAL. The essentials of Kalman filtering and smoothing in comparison to traditional cross-sectional factor score estimators are explained, stressing unbiasedness considerations and the initialization problem. The state-space model is represented as an SEM (structural equation model) and estimated by means of an SEM program. The value of the Kalman filter and smoother in pupil monitoring is enhanced by specifying a “structured means” instead of the traditional “zero means” SEM model and by introducing random subject effects.

Effectiveness of guided co-construction versus direct instruction

In a field experiment with 178 first-grade pupils, the effects of an experimental beginning reading programme were investigated. Both an experimental and a control group worked with the most frequently used Dutch beginning reading programme, Learning to Read Safely. The instructional approach implemented in the experimental group was guided co-construction (GCC); the instructional approach implemented in the control group was direct instruction (DI). The results of an overall analysis of the development of word recognition (WR) over time (i.e., throughout the 1st grade) showed the pupils in the experimental group to outperform those in the control group. However, the better performance by the experimental group attenuated over time with better performance by the control group on the last measurement occasion. Majority pupils benefitted more from GCC but minority pupils more from DI. Minority pupils in the control group showed greatest progress.

PARABLE UNDERSTANDING IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL CLASSROOM: A SOCIO-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE ON LEARNING TO UNDERSTAND PARABLES

In recent decades parable understanding has been widely researched in the field of pedagogy of religion, mainly conducted in a Piagetian framework. This article presents an intervention study taking a socio-cultural perspective on learning to understand parables. The aim of this research is to investigate the effects of curriculum interventions by way of both comprehensive and partial strategic learning tasks on the understanding of parables in the primary school classroom, as well as which aspects help to explain these effects.The study involved 484 primary school students in the fifth and sixth grades. It consists of an intervention study involving a quasi-experimental design with two experimental groups and a control group.Results reveal that the effect on the group which dealt with the partial strategic intervention is greater than that on the control group. The difference in effect between this experimental group and the control group is jointly attributable to the factors of age, gender and initial achievement level.The study shows that innovation of learning practices is only effective if it proceeds in successive steps. The partial strategic intervention may well be an appropriate first step in the innovation of parable understanding learning practices. Students should first master a limited number of strategies, which gradually increases. This need not wait until the child reaches the age of twelve; the first steps can be taken as early as the age of nine.