Far too many middle-school (6th-8th grades) students with disabilities have trouble reading and then leave high school functionally illiterate (Riley, 1996). The plethera of scientifically-based reading research on how to best teach reading supports direct and explicit instruction in the five essential sub-skills; phonics, fluency, spelling, vocabulary, and comprehension (National Reading Panel, 2002;NPR). However, most of this research has focused on students in K-3 grades creating a gap in our knowledge of how to best teach middle school students. These students, many who end up in special education, are in dire need of research based reading instruction designed specifically for the unique needs of adolescents. While research has answered many questions concerning specific instructional techniques necessary for the remediation of each NPR subskill, it has not provided enough information concering the most effective way to sequence and balance instruction of each sub-skill to maximize responsiveness to instruction (Torgesen, Alexander, Wagner, Rashotte, Boeller, & Conway, 2001). The challenge then for reading instruction designed to meet the needs of adolescents is not how or what to teach, but how to best sequence and balance the introduction of the NPR's five essential sub-skills to maximize student responsiveness. Therefore, the purpose of this project is to begin examining the best way to organize instructional sequencing of the NPR sub-skills. This study will examine the effect of integrated (all essential sub-skills taught within a single lesson) versus sequentially integrated (each new sub-skill is sequentially integrated into the instruction of the previous sub-skill(s)) instructional schedules on the reading skill acquisition of middle school students with reading disabilities.
| Calhoon, Mary Beth; Petscher, Yaacov (2013) Individual and group sensitivity to remedial reading program design: Examining reading gains across three middle school reading projects. Read Writ 26:565-592 |
| Calhoon, Mary Beth; Sandow, Alexia; Hunter, Charles V (2010) Reorganizing the instructional reading components: could there be a better way to design remedial reading programs to maximize middle school students with reading disabilities' response to treatment? Ann Dyslexia 60:57-85 |
