Victoria Sanchez

Access to a Responsiveness to Intervention Model: Does Beginning Intervention in Kindergarten Matter?

In this study, we tested the outcomes of access to a response to intervention (RtI) model in kindergarten or in first grade on end-of-Grade-2 reading achievement and placement in special education. Across five schools, 214 students who began having access to Tier 2 intervention in kindergarten or first grade were compared in Grades 1 and 2 with 208 cohort peers who were average readers and 102 historical control condition second grade poor readers who did not receive Tier 2 intervention. Results demonstrated significant effects on reading achievement for access to RtI in kindergarten at the end of first grade (effects averaged 0.48), but not in second grade, except for students who were English language learners (ELLs), who showed an advantage through the end of second grade. Students with access to RtI overall had significantly higher outcomes at the end of Grade 2 than students in the historical control, with no differences resulting from ELL status. No significant difference in the proportion of students placed in special education was noted; however, a greater proportion of the students found eligible as with learning disabilities had poor reading scores if they were placed after participating in RtI.

Building BRIDGES A Design Experiment to Improve Reading and United States History Knowledge of Poor Readers in Eighth Grade

We tested the effects of teaching reading skills through U.S. history content for 38 eighth-grade poor readers whose reading ability ranged from second- to fourth-grade levels. Half of the students received special education services, and half of the students were English language learners. Students were taught to decode multisyllabic words, learn meanings of academic words, and identify cause-and-effect relationships. They used easy levels of history text and then bridged into more difficult text accounts of the same events. Results showed gains in performance across each cycle in each reading component. Comparisons between students in the intervention and their typically developing peers showed stronger gains for intervention students in vocabulary and comprehension strategies. Students with disabilities who received instruction in causes and effects of historical events scored similarly to typical readers in their general education history classes.

Teaching Academic Vocabulary to Adolescents With Learning Disabilities

T EA C H IN G E xc ep ti on al C hi ld re n , V ol . 48 , N o. 1 , pp . 36 –4 4. C op yr ig ht 2 01 5 T he A ut ho r( s) . D O I: 1 0. 11 77 /0 04 00 59 91 55 94 78 3 Mr. Kent teaches U.S. History to students in a self-contained special education classroom at Sunnyside Middle School. Most of Mr. Kent’s students read below grade level and have a learning disability (LD). While teaching a lesson on Westward Expansion, Mr. Kent noticed his students struggling to understand concepts presented in the textbook. Upon closer observation, he determined their limited knowledge of word meanings was a major factor impeding their understanding of the text. Mr. Kent knew that asking students to look up definitions in the dictionary was a poor instructional strategy; students often found definitions for content words but were unable to apply word meanings to the context of U.S. history. Students also used the words inappropriately in class discussions and written work. Mr. Kent wanted to provide explicit and systematic vocabulary instruction to facilitate his students’ access to and understanding of the content area text, but he wasn’t sure where to start. The reading specialist at his school suggested he directly teach word meanings using the robust vocabulary instruction approach because research supports this method as a way to improve vocabulary knowledge for a range of students, including adolescents reading below grade level (i.e., struggling readers) and students with LD. Why Is Vocabulary Instruction Important?

Issues in assessment for intervention in implementation of responsiveness to intervention models

Response to Intervention (RtI) models require valid assessments for decisions regarding whether a student should receive more intensive intervention, whether interventions improve performance, whether a student has improved sufficiently to no longer need intervention, or whether a student should be considered for a formal evaluation for special education. We describe assessment tools used currently in RtI models in reading in kindergarten through third grade, along with how these tools function in multiyear implementations of RtI. In addition to the measurement tools, we describe concerns regarding when RtI models are judged for their effects on reading improvement and the attrition that may inflate these results.

Building Better Bridges: Teaching Adolescents Who Are Poor Readers in Eighth Grade to Comprehend History Text.

Helping struggling readers to learn history content in middle school can be difficult due to heavy reading demands. In this study, researchers taught poor readers with and without disabilities in eighth grade to generate main idea statements; create, compare, and contrast paragraphs; and identify cause and effect relations, along with relevant multisyllabic word study and vocabulary, as they read history text. The 34 participating students included 14 with disabilities and 20 without disabilities, who scored below the 5th percentile in reading, on average. The results were compared across special education and English learner status and with 81 typical readers from the same classes who studied the same units of history. Treated students made significant gains in use of these strategies, and poor readers with and without disabilities performed similar to their typical reader classmates in two of the three strategies following instruction. The instructional routines for each strategy are described.

Special Education Teachers Integrating Reading with Eighth Grade U.S. History Content.

This research replicates an earlier study and extends it by shifting instructional responsibility from researchers to special education teachers, who implemented reading instruction that included multisyllabic word decoding, academic vocabulary, and three comprehension strategies (generating main ideas, comparing and contrasting people and events, and identifying cause and effect relations) with their intact eighth grade history classes, using history text as the reading material. Participants included 73 eighth grade students with disabilities (77 percent with learning disabilities, 72 percent males, and 45 percent English language learners) and four teachers. Compared to students with disabilities in typical special education history classes, students in the treatment outperformed controls on researcher-developed measures of word- and text-level reading comprehension, as well as in the history content that students in both conditions studied. Across reading strategies, implementation of “nearly all lesson components” ranged from 72 percent to 83 percent.