Effectiveness of the Edmark Reading Program - Research Proposal Example

Topic: Edmark’s Reading Program Effectiveness of the Edmark Reading Program to High School Special Education with Moderate Disabilities Introduction Through keen research, the Edmark reading program was developed in the year 1960. The academic success of any students is always greatly affected by their ability to read. Those students who do not polish their reading skills before moving on to the upper grade have an almost impossible chance of ever making up for this loss in the future. It is for this reason that teachers are required to come up with a reliable reading program for the struggling students and bring them up to an appropriate level. The law stipulates that must include five essential components of reading instructions so that the students can be efficiently geared toward an important goal of prospering academically. These elements are phonemic awareness, phonics, and vocabulary development, reading fluency and reading comprehension. Each of these elements is a critical ingredient for bringing every student up to grade level by the end of the third grade. By the third grade, it is important that these students surpass the grade level reading proficiency. So that they can perfect their reading, students have to gain the basic skills in the early grades. This will also be important in avoiding the spending of so much more money trying to remediate those who did not acquire these crucial reading skills in the earlier classes. The Edmark Program is therefore beneficial to students in high school and who have disabilities by polishing their reading skills. Identification of the problem There are various problems faced by high school students with disabilities and Edmark’s reading program attempts to solve them. These students may have problems with their fluency in reading, attitudes towards school, academics, and the way high school students with disabilities are engaged in their school. Students with disabilities sometimes do not perform as well as their peers in academics. They also do not always meet the standards required for reading in their grade level. This caused concerns about the performance of the high school students with moderate disabilities. Reading disabilities may end up leading to larger numbers of students who experience an increased level of academic failure. Review of the research Various researches done on the effectiveness of Edmark’s reading program on high school students. According to (Khun and Schwanenflugel 2006) high school is a very important level in education because it is the year when reading shifts from simply learning to read and goes to reading to learn. The purpose of the study was to ensure that a reliable and effective solution was made concerning these problems with children with disabilities. A study done by (Roundy and Roundy in 2009) revealed that there was a direct link between students’ negative attitudes and their fluency deficits. This goes to show that students’ attitude matters a lot and greatly influences their performance. The Edmark reading program is divided into two stages, the first level and the second level. In the first level, students are introduced to a hundred and fifty sight-words that are commonly used. It teaches about the endings of words as well. They start by recognizing the new word. They then attempt to learn to reader the new word while it is in separation. Afterwards, they practice reading the word in the context of a phrase, then a sentence then move on to reading it in stories. So that they can move on to the second level, the students need to make sure that they have learnt all the one hundred and fifty words. The second level brings them to another new two hundred sight words. These words gradually increase in difficulty (Meeks 2014). Although the research literature has been vivid on the fact that there is a big chance of the sight word instructions being very beneficial to students who have particular cognitive abilities, they also miss a chance for the experience of broader literacy. It is also missing the chance for them to develop phonic analysis skills and further their understanding of the use of functional sight words. This is because they will miss out on the opportunity to participate in the type of reading found in the general education in the classroom (Browder, Cortade-Little, Wakeman,& Ricleman 2006). There is however a study that suggests those students who have moderate cognitive disabilities as well as those who have severe cognitive disabilities can learn the skills of phonics (Browder 2006). A study by (Slavin, R. E., Cheung, A., Groff, C., & Lake, C. 2008) revealed that programs that have been designed to change daily teaching give positive results as in achievements that occur with instructional process programs. This is similar to the Edmark reading program. This study is also supported by (Bradford, S., Shippen, M. E., Alberto, P., Houchins, D. E., & Flores, M. 2006) as the study shows the efficiency of systematic instructions to students who have moderate cognitive disabilities. Various reliable studies affirm the effectiveness of the elements that were used in the Edmark Reading Program. Researchers noted that instructions that had been programmed instructions were rather individualized and sequential. As a result, the children were able to proceed at a rate of their own. Other studies such as (Hetzroni, O. E., & Shavit, P. 2002) show the importance of instructional methods as an approach for identifying the abilities of the students. (Hedrick, W. B., Katims, D. S., & Carr, N. J. 1999) advocates for the use of multi-methods to efficiently benefit the students. These studies show that the Edmark’s reading program is effective when appropriately teaching the students with moderate disabilities to read and understand content by the time they enter their high school level. Hypothesis All students can learn to read under the right learning conditions. Proposed research design As much as so far, the Edmark Reading Program has been showing positive results, there is still a need for further research to be done to ensure all types of students are advantaged. A different research design will involve a larger group of students. They would be about 500 students. This will enable the researchers have more types of characteristics to consider. They will have to come up with a way to meet all the needs of the different students. It will result in more fluency among the students Data collection methods with logical discussion of appropriateness The data collection methods used will include interview, observation and document analysis. Through the interviews, the students will be asked questions about what they think about particular aspects of reading while using the Edmark’s reading program. The interview would reveal where the students have most difficulties enabling the identification of which aspects of the program is helpful to high school students. This will enable be understand from which angle to approach while testing the students. The questions will be asked in a manner that is friendly and not in a way that makes them feel cornered to answer, what they think is considered correct. This way, they will give helpful answers that will enable the smooth progression of the research. The research will also cover a larger number of students so that there can be a variety of results to compare. Through the method of observation, it will be possible to identify a couple of things about them. These will include their attitude on various activities such as reading. Observation will also enable the detection of how the students read aloud in the classroom; whether they are fluent or stammering. It will also help determine how confident the children with disabilities are and how they are holding up in school. In the end, it will be easier to determine how the Edmark reading program is effective to high school. The document analysis will enable the analyzing of performance of the 500 students from before the research of study method and after the research method. The first 250 will test children with disabilities and their progress when the Edmark reading program is introduced. The other 250 students with be those without reading problems and are under the Edmark reading program. They will help in coming up with a sensible conclusion and solution to the problem at hand, which is not to leave any student behind in the journey of ensuring that they learn how to read. It is an effective method of analyzing the progress, stagnation of regression of the students’ performance. With each test, the records will help in determining whether the study is working for the good of the student’s interests or completely doing the contrary. Specific instruments that will be used to collect data For the interview, questionnaires will be used, which will let the students feel free to express their likes and dislikes. This will specifically be an open-ended questionnaire so that they will not be limited to picking tricky questions that they may need to expound. For the observation, it will be the eyes and a record of the trends and patterns noted about the behavior and attitudes of the students toward reading tasks. Under the document analysis method, the instruments required will involve past records and current records that go on to during and after the research is done. They will enable the noting of patterns in their performance on subjects that may require reading. These records will have been put in place from the start to the end of the research in an orderly manner. This will ensure easy retrieval of any important document. Procedures The interviews will be issued to all the students in the study. They will then be instructed not to write their names as they will be anonymous hence they were free to express their views in a truthful manner. They will only have to give their views and not discuss before writing down their answers. This will make them comfortable enough to know that their views are of value and will give them willingly. The observation technique will not involve much procedure. It will simply be observing the behavior of the students and discreetly taking down short notes for after reference. This will enable the identification of particular patterns in their habits and attitudes. The idea will be to collect information on them without making them feel as though they are being monitored so that they can continue being themselves. This approach will therefore give reliable results for study in the end of the research. The data analysis technique for each of the data collection methods For the interview, the research will analyze the common answers, as they will most likely reflection the common thoughts of the students. The research will also end in the reading of each interview keenly so that the strengths and weaknesses of the students can be identified. This will efficiently give viable information on their attitudes towards reading and their thoughts on the methods of teaching that have been used around them. The opportunity to vividly express their true thoughts on the anonymous open-ended interview will be splendid platform for them to openly express their view and opinions. The analysis technique of the observation itself will be on the notes taken down while taking the observations. These will be helpful every step of the way. The data analysis on the document analysis will be to assemble the records of all forms of data collection used including the interview and the observation method. There will also be tests done on the students which will show whether the students are progressing or deteriorating with the implementation of the new methods. Each of these methods is important to the form of research and ensuring that the disabled students’ needs are adequately addressed. The analysis of these factors will be useful in guiding the research towards a relevant and reliable conclusion. The performance of every student is important and the research will ensure that each student will be handled appropriately and equally to ensure the best results and solution. References Bradford, S., Shippen, M. E., Alberto, P., Houchins, D. E., & Flores, M. (2006). Using systematic instruction to teach decoding skills to middle school students with moderate intellectual disabilities. Education and Training in Developmental Disabilities, 333-343. Browder, (2006). Research on reading instruction for individuals with significant cognitive disabilities. Exceptional children, 72(4), 392-408. Browder, D. M., & Spooner, F. (2006). Teaching language arts, math, and science to students with significant cognitive disabilities. Brookes Publishing Company. PO Box 10624, Baltimore, MD 21285. Conners, F. A. (1992). Reading instruction for students with moderate mental retadation: Review and analysis of research. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 96, 577–597. Hedrick, W. B., Katims, D. S., & Carr, N. J. (1999). Implementing a multimethod, multilevel literacy program for students with mental retardation.Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 14(4), 231-239. Hetzroni, O. E., & Shavit, P. (2002). Comparison of two instructional strategies for acquiring form and sound of Hebrew letters by students with mild mental retardation. Education and Training in Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, 273-282. Kuhn, M. R., Schwanenflugel, P. J., Morris, R. D., Morrow, L. M., Woo, D. G., Meisinger, E. B., ... & Stahl, S. A. (2006). Teaching children to become fluent and automatic readers. Journal of Literacy Research, 38(4), 357-387. Meeks, B. T., Martinez, J., & Pienta, R. S. (2014). Effect of Edmark Program on Reading Fluency in Third-Grade Students with Disabilities. International Journal of Instruction, 7(2). Roundy, A. R., & Roundy, P. T. (2009). The effect of repeated reading on student fluency: does practice always make perfect. International Journal of Social Sciences, 4(1), 54-59. Slavin, R. E., Cheung, A., Groff, C., & Lake, C. (2008). Effective reading programs for middle and high schools: A best‐evidence synthesis. Reading Research Quarterly, 43(3), 290- 322. Read More