Fostering Flexibility and Comprehension in Elementary Students (original) (raw)
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Cognitive flexibility predicts early reading skills
Frontiers in Psychology, 2014
An important aspect of learning to read is efficiency in accessing different kinds of linguistic information (orthographic, phonological, and semantic) about written words. The present study investigates whether, in addition to the integrity of such linguistic skills, early progress in reading may require a degree of cognitive flexibility in order to manage the coordination of this information effectively. Our study will look for evidence of a link between flexibility and both word reading and passage reading comprehension, and examine whether any such link involves domain-general or reading-specific flexibility. As the only previous support for a predictive relationship between flexibility and early reading comes from studies of reading comprehension in the opaque English orthography, another possibility is that this relationship may be largely orthography-dependent, only coming into play when mappings between representations are complex and polyvalent. To investigate these questions, 60 second-graders learning to read the more transparent French orthography were presented with two multiple classification tasks involving reading-specific cognitive flexibility (based on words) and non-specific flexibility (based on pictures). Reading skills were assessed by word reading, pseudo-word decoding, and passage reading comprehension measures. Flexibility was found to contribute significant unique variance to passage reading comprehension even in the less opaque French orthography. More interestingly, the data also show that flexibility is critical in accounting for one of the core components of reading comprehension, namely, the reading of words in isolation. Finally, the results constrain the debate over whether flexibility has to be reading-specific to be critically involved in reading. Citation: Colé P, Duncan LG and Blaye A (2014) Cognitive flexibility predicts early reading skills. Front. Psychol. 5:565.
Measurement of the effects of purpose and passage difficulty on reading flexibility
Journal of Educational Psychology, 1981
This study addressed whether students could change their reading rate when presented with two clearly explicated purposed for reading. Students in Grades 8 and 11 read either an Sih-grade reading level passage for detail and an llth-grade passage for overview, or the llth-grade passage for detail and the 8th-grade passage for overview. Comprehension questions appropriate for the reading purpose followed both passages. An analysis of results using' a Latin-square design with repeated measures indicated that students could adapt their reading rate to fit different purposes but that passage difficulty affected the degree of flexibility. One mark of the mature reader is the ability to "read in different ways, at different rates and different purposes, hut with skill and understanding appropriate to his goal" (Raygor & Schick, 1970). The difficulty in adequately measuring reading flexibility lies within its definition and the great number of variables that influence it. Most research concludes that flexibility involves changes in reader behavior based on differing purposes or materials (
Reading flexibility and its effect on comprehension in students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
2012
Reading flexibility exercises were conducted over a six-week period with a fourth grade student with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to determine whether they would increase reading flexibility as well as comprehension. Cartwright’s (2010) reading flexibility assessment and exercises along with the Qualitative Reading Inventory-5 (QRI; Leslie & Caldwell, 2011) word lists and passages were administered. To ensure the intervention was “autism friendly,” assessments and exercises were altered so that visuals were used and activities were predictable. Based upon assessments administered, the participant made gains in both reading flexibility and reading comprehension skills. Further research must be conducted with a larger sample to determine whether this is an effective intervention for other students with ASD. READING FLEXIBILITY IN STUDENTS WITH ASD 4 Chapter One Introduction Statement of the Problem Samuels (2004) stated that with practice, people are able to perform more than one ta...
Flexibles Grouping, Explicit Reading Instruction in Elementary School
Journal of Instructional Pedagogies, 2013
The objective of this collaborative research is to evaluate the impact of a pedagogical intervention that combines flexible grouping and explicit instruction of reading comprehension strategies. The development of competencies is spread over a two years interval. However, despite this quite long implementation period, several Quebec students still had not completely overcome their difficulties in reading comprehension. The study was conducted at an elementary school on the outskirts of Montreal. 76 students participated in the research. Four teachers and one learning specialist planned and experimented these monthly 90-minute classes, which were implemented ten times during the school year. The results show a noticeable reading comprehension improvement, particularly, for students with learning difficulties.
National reports reveal one-third of American fourth-graders read below basic level on measures of comprehension. One critical component of comprehension is fluency: rapid, accurate, expressive reading with automaticity and prosody. While many fluency studies and classroom interventions focus only on reading rate, this alone is not sufficient. This experimental study focused on QuickReads, which uses science and social studies texts to build reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. We explored the impact of QuickReads in print-only and print+technology formats for 1,484 students in 2nd-5th grades. Using hierarchical linear modeling with pre-post design we found significant gains in fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary for students in all grades using either QuickReads format over control. Results generalized across achievement groups, ethnicities, and ELL levels. Implementation measures indicated high teacher fidelity to intervention techniques, lending robustness to student results. This study provides an example of scaling up validated instructional practices and lends support for important elements of fluency instruction: emphasizing prosody as well as rate, including content area topics, supported and independent practice, vocabulary and comprehension development, and motivational aspects such as ease of use.
2019
This quantitative research study was conducted to determine the difference between digital and print media in terms of how well readers understand the text using either of the two. A sample of 62 Grade 5 students at The Palmridge School in Bacoor were divided into two groups to take three reading comprehension tests using the reading media assigned to them. The instruments included texts composed of more than a hundred words followed by six to ten questions answerable one of the four options following each question. With 95% confidence level, .05 margin of error, and 5% significance level, the computed t-value was 3.318, and the study found that there is a significant difference between digital and print media based on the RCT scores garnered by each group. Moreover, the result of data suggests that using print media allows readers to better comprehend what they read.