Submitted by Sandy Toothaker

SPY 620: Introduction to Multi-Tier Systems of Support

December 2013

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Reading fluency is the ability to read text accurately, quickly, and with good expression so that time can be allocated to the understanding of what is read. (Meyer & Felton, 1999)

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David LaBerge and Jay Samuels (1974) were the first psychologists to design a model of automaticity in reading. They argued that lower-level microskills (letter-sound knowledge, letter combinations, and meaning of words and their connections) needed to be automatic to allow the reader the more complex comprehension skills.

Dahl (1974) and Samuels (1985) developed the Repeated Reading technique where students would read a level appropriate passage over until a particular rate of words per minute (wpm) was achieved.

Their thoughts were that the repeated reading would increase the student’s fluency and that fluency contributes to comprehension.

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A variation of the technique, Assisted Repeated Reading (ARR) was later developed. (Bowers, 1993; Young, Bowers, & MacKinnon, 1996) In ARR, the student reads along with a fluent reader. Therefore, increasing phrasing, expression, and speed.

Repeated Reading is a technique that would be appropriate to utilize with all grade levels and with students from diverse, economic, racial, linguistic, religious, cultural, and ability backgrounds .

Repeated Reading would be appropriate for Tiers one through three in a MTSS.

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Teachers could train themselves on the repeated reading procedures through online research or by purchasing The Power of Repeated Reading in Small-Group Instruction by Wendie Bramwell and Brooke Graham Doyle (July 1, 2008)

Amazon.com $9.99 Kindle Edition

Scholastic.com $8 e-book/$12.74 book

The principles could be utilized with all

Grades.

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Choral reading; Students read in unison Tape/computer assisted reading; Student practice reads in

unison with the use of a tape/computer. Partner (paired) reading; Students are homogeneously paired.

They take turns reading a passage three times to each other. The non reader assists with errors.

Readers Theatre; Students are able to practice their individual parts to prepare for either a final reading or performance.

Echo reading; A teacher models fluent reading while reading a short passage. When the teacher stops, the student then reads the short passage back to the teacher.

Timed Reading; Individual students practice read a passage while timing themselves in an effort to increase their time as they read a passage multiple times.

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Fluent reading aids comprehension (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), 2000). The goal of the Family Fluency Program was to heighten the awareness of parents, children, and teachers concerning the important roles they collectively play in literacy development (Mandel Morrow, Kuhn, Schwanenflugel, 2006). The purpose of the Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction (FORI) was to identify effective procedures for teaching reading with a focus on fluency training (Kuhn & Stahl, 2003). The study took place over five years, in two elementary school districts in southeastern U.S. and one in the northeast. There were a total of 376 children involved in the study. The participants that will be discussed are the students from the school in northeast that were tracked for one year. There were a total of 115 participants. Students were placed into two groups; three classes in repeated reading groups and three classes in a control group. There were 62 students in the treatment group. The remainder of the students was placed into the control group.

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The median age for both groups was seven years and six months. Both groups utilized a basal reading program. The lessons were similar, with exception to the treatment group receiving more guidance in their reading lessons. Teachers would introduce the story and new vocabulary, taking time to build schema, as well as have students take part in repeated reading of the story. The Gray Oral Reading Test, Fourth Edition (GORT-4) was utilized for pre and post tests. During the study, students in the treatment group were sent home with the basal reader to practice read with their parents. Also, their parents were invited to three parent meetings discussing the importance of fluency, describing the school program and teaching parents of ways they could support their children’s fluency development. The results of the study confirmed that scaffolding reading lessons and parent involvement are beneficial to students. At the end of the study, a survey was given to all participants, teachers and parents from the treatment group. The survey results showed positive results. The fluency methods utilized in this study would be appropriate for tier one and two of response to intervention.

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Reading difficulties often continue beyond the primary grades when students are expected to transition from learning to read to reading to learn. The objective in this study was to examine the necessity of passage repetition within the Re-read-Adapt and Answer-Comprehend (RAAC). Thirty students from a rural elementary school, in Southeast Iowa, were chosen to participate in the study through the school’s response to intervention criteria. Students were randomly assigned to the repeated reading or non repeated reading conditions. Pre and post data was collected through DIBELS Oral Reading Fluency (DORF) and Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ-III). 11

Paraprofessionals were trained to facilitate the lessons. Intervention took place for fifty 15 minute sessions over a four month time frame. Students in the RAAC intervention with repeated reading began by reading a passage as quickly as they could while still paying close attention to understanding the passage. Once they completed the passage, they were asked to read aloud generic story element questions. Then, the student reread the passage aloud until they met the predetermined criteria for correct words per minute (CWPM). After each reading, the teacher would provide corrective feedback on errors and fluency. After the student either mastered the reading of the text or read the text four times, the student was asked to answer four factual and four inferential questions about the text. If the student met the CWPM criteria, they were started on a text that was a grade level higher and continued on with the lesson in the same manner. If they didn’t meet the criteria the text level was lowered by one grade level. Students in the RAAC intervention without passage repetition followed the same steps; however, instead of rereading passages they read the passage once and moved onto a new passage.

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Post tests revealed that both groups of students made significant gains in reading fluency and general reading achievement reaffirming the importance of formative feedback. The researchers noted that they’d like to see further research done with a no treatment control group, examination of repetitive and non repetitive reading fluency interventions and another reading comprehension measure utilized between conditions. The further research will help to determine when and with who repeated reading interventions may be necessary (Therrien, Kirk, Woods-Groves 2012). The methods discussed in this study would be appropriate for tier two and three of response to intervention.

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Ring, Barefoot, Avrit, Brown and Black (2013) examined the effects of word and text-level instruction to repeated reading in a Tier II level of RTI for reading intervention through a cluster-randomized trial. 80+ students were selected to receive small group instruction by 25 classroom teachers; approximately half focused on text-level instruction and the remainder focused on word-level instruction. Students received 30 minutes of instruction for 3 to 4 days per week for approximately 3 months. The word-level instruction group utilized the program Rite Flight, which focused on target phonics concepts, randomized lists of repeated words, sight words and short phrases from text. The text-level group utilized the program Read Naturally, which included grade-leveled stories.

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Students began reading at a text that they could read at approximately 60 words per minute and continued practicing the text through re-readings with their instructor or with a recorded reading. The goal was for the students to increase their reading rate by approximately 30 words above their initial reading placement and move onto the next grade-level text. Both programs showed gains in reading fluency. The authors feel more research is needed to ascertain the best combination of instruction and assessment to accommodate the instructional needs of non fluent students. The methods in this study would be appropriate for tier one and two of response to intervention.

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The CBM was developed in the late 1970’s by Stanley L. Deno, Professor of Educational Psychology, at University of Minnesota.

In 1985, the CBM was field-tested at the Pine County Special Education Cooperative in Minnesota. Since that time, the CBM has been supported by the U.S. Dept. of Education and has been the measurement and assessment tool of choice in numerous federally funded studies, http://www.cehd.umn.edu/research/highligts/CBM.

Since the mid 1980’s, CBM has been developed to measure student progress in reading, math, early literacy, spelling, and writing.

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Curriculum Based Measure-Reading (CBM-R) is an individual Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) assessment for grades one to 12 that can be administered in real-time browser based scoring or paper and pencil. Assessments are one to four minutes in length.

The CBM-R is available in English and Spanish and can be utilized to assess students with disabilities.

There are 23 grade level test probes for first grade and 33 grade level test probes for grades two through eight. National Norms extend to grade 12 with the eighth grade probes.

CBM-R assessments are available through NCS, Pearson, Inc. Their latest publication is fall 2013.

The cost of CBM-R is $4 per student/per year. On –site training is available for up to 30 participants for $4,500. The CBM-R would be appropriate for students with diverse ,

economic, racial, linguistic, religious, and cultural backgrounds.

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Student reads aloud from a grade level passage for one minute.

Errors are recorded (mispronunciations, substitutions, omissions, or words read out of sequence) that the student doesn’t self correct within three seconds.

During universal screening, students are administered three grade level probes and the median score is utilized to measure academic progress.

CBM-R can be utilized for universal screening of all students three times per year.

Probes are also designed to be used for progress monitoring more frequently with at risk students.

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The CBM-R may not be appropriate for students with certain speech impairments (stuttering) , hearing impairments that need to use sign language for their only means of communication and/or certain vision impairments prevent the student from seeing the assessment.

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Purpose: To examine CBM-R and CBM-mR slopes across grades utilizing the bivariate latent growth modeling (blgm), advanced statistical approach.

Method: 1528 third through eighth grade general and special education students, 770 girls/758 boys from two elementary and three middle schools in rural southeastern U.S.

-School one utilized Scott Foresman (2004) reading instructional materials for students in Kindergarten through grade five.

-School two utilized Wilson Reading Foundations for Students in grades three through five.

-School three utilized Scott Foresman (2004) reading instructional materials for grades five through eight.

-Schools four and five utilized Scott Foresman (2004) reading instructional materials for grades six through eight.

Ethnic breakdown: 94.4% caucasian, 3.3% hispanic, 1.5% African American, 0.5% Asian, and 0.3% Native American.

9.3% of students received special education services under an individualized educational plan (IEP).

1.33% of students were ELL students.

54.7% of students were eligible for free or reduced lunch. 21

Measures:-Four standardized AIMSweb measures (CBM-R, CBM-mR, CBM-WE (Written Expression) and M-CBM (Math) probes) were collected on all students in grades three through eight. The CBM-R measures number of words correctly identified in one minutes. The CBM-mR, a multiple choice cloze task, measures number of words circled correctly within three minutes.

-Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) standardized test was administered to students in grade three through eight each spring. This test measures skills in Reading, Language Arts, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies. Accommodations are made for special education and ELL students.

Data Collection: CBM-R and CBM-mR passages were administered to all students three times a year to individual students. Each CBM-R score represented the median score of three grade-level passages.

Data Analysis: Latent Growth Modeling was utilized to test the proposed growth models.

-Univariate LGM was used to examine whether growth trajectories from the fall to spring are a linear trend.

-Bivariate LGM allowed the researchers to examine multiple growth processes simultaneously was utilized to estimate the growth parameters in the CBM-R and CBM-mR.

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Results: Overall, the mean level of both CBM-R and CBM-mRincreased in all cases, with exception for CBM-mR at Grades 4,6, and 8. The magnitudes of correlation coefficients for CBM-R were generally more robust (ranging from .89 to .96) than those of the CBM-mR(ranging from .59 to .81). In reviewing the correlation coefficients between the CBM-R and CBM-mR for the Fall, winter and spring assessments, it was found that the outcome was positive and significant (ranging from .58 to .77). This shows that there were modest to moderate associations between the CBM-R and CBM-mR.

Conclusion: This study indicated that with BLGM, the CBM-R and CBM-mR slopes aren’t correlated. Some limitations are noted within this study; results are unique to one state located within the Southeastern United States, this study is limited to examining the two CBM assessment slopes, the correlation coefficients for CBM-mR, which indicate stability, weren’t good, CBM has only been utilized in basic academic skills ie. math and written expression, and a linear growth shape was the only shape that could be evaluated considering only three data points per grade were recorded.

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The purpose of this study was to estimate rate of growth within seasons for general and special education populations, evaluate whether CBM-R rate of growth will be consistent throughout the academic year, and test the hypothesis that the seasonal effect is typically characterized by more growth in the fall than in the spring.

A total of 4824 participants (52% males, 48% female) in second through sixth grades, from seven elementary schools in rural and suburban Midwest. Participants included: 94% white, 2% Native American, 2% Asian or Pacific Islander, 1% Hispanic, 1% Black. 31% of participants received free or reduced lunch and 8% received special education services.

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All students were assessed using CBM-R probes every fall, winter, and spring for each year of the study. Data was collected from 2001 to 2005.

Individuals were trained for an hour, which was followed by a session of competency.

The average of growth was positive for all conditions across the seasons, grade levels and populations.

Study limitations were as follows: participants were all from one midwestern state, students were only assessed three times per year, as opposed to monthly or weekly and the assessments were given according to a given month, as opposed to a certain date.

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Christ, Van Norman, Zopluoglu 2013, sought to determine the effects of baseline value on estimates of trend in CBM-R data. They hypothesized baseline estimation procedures that utilized the median of three days observations would improve the reliability, validity, and precision of growth estimates compared with using a single or median score of three observations. The authors used longitudinal modeling to examine the rate of change in ORF by evaluating the relationship between time and wrcm. Three CBM-R probes were administered the first three days of the school week. Then, one probe was administered each week for the duration of the progress monitoring; ranging from six to 20 days.

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There were 1517 second grade participants and 1561 third grade participants. There were close to 46% female, 2% special education, 53% White, 17% Black, 8% Hispanic/Latino, 6% Asian/Pacific Islander, and 2% American Indian/Alaska Native across the group of participants. Students involved in the study were part of a Tier two reading intervention group. There were four independent variables that were manipulated in the study; baseline estimate, residual variance, duration of progress monitoring, and whether the first observation systematically underestimated performance. Considering baseline estimates, three were calculated using one day observations and two were calculated using three days, nine observations, of data collection. The procedures for the one day of data collection were mean, median, and the first observation. The procedures for the three days of data collection used mean and median value of the nine observations.

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Validity was checked by verifying that simulated estimates of growth were approximately 1.50 wrcm per week across the conditions. In conclusion, increasing the duration of progress monitoring and the quality of datasets improved the reliability, validity and precision of the estimates of growth. Collecting numerous observations to estimate the baseline for CBM-R progress monitoring may not be in the best interest of time. The findings of this study show the importance of utilizing more than one observation to estimate the baseline.

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Considering an RTI Three-Tier Model, Repeated Reading could be applied to Tiers One through Three to increase reading fluency and the CBM-R could be utilized in Tier One to verify effectiveness of instruction, Tier two and Three to check and adjust interventions.

Journal Articles: Christ, T. J., Silberglitt, B., Yeo, S., & Cormier, D. (2010). Curriculum-based

measurement of oral reading: an evaluation of growth rates and seasonal effects among students served in general and special education. School Psychology Review, 39(3), 447-462.

Mandel Morrow, L., Kuhn, M. R., & Schwanenfluegel, P. J. (2006). The family fluency program. The Reading Program, 60(4), 322-333.

Ring, J. J., Barefoot, , L. C., Avrit, K. J., Brown, S. A., & Black, J. L. (2013). Reading fluency instruction for students at risk for reading failure. Remedial and Special Education, 34(2), 102-112.

Therrien, W. J., Kirk, J. F., & Woods-Grove, S. (2012). Comparison of a reading fluency intervention with and without passage repetition on reading achievement. Remedial and Special Education, 33(5), 309-319.

Van Norman, E. R., Christ, T. J., & Zopluoglu, C. (2013). The effects of baseline estimation on the reliability, validity, and precision of cbm-r growth estimates. School Psychology Quarterly, 28(3), 239-255. doi: 10.1037/spq0000023

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Journal articles (continued) Yeo, S., Fearrington, J. Y., & Christ, T. J. (2012). Relation between cbm-r adn cbm-mr

slopes: an application of latent growth modeling. Assessment for Effective Intervention, 37(3), 147-158.

Websites Cox, J. (n.d.). Develop reading fluency and comprehension with repeated reading. Retrieved

from http://k6educators.about.com/od/ReadingStrategies/a/Repeated-Reading-Fluency-Strategy.htm

Deno, S. L. (2005, October). Curriculum-based measurement (cbm): student assessment. Retrieved from http://www.cehd.umn.edu/research/highlights/CBM/

Pearson, Inc, N. (2012). Reading curriculum-based measurement. Retrieved from http://www.aimsweb.com/wp-content/uploads/R-CBM-Admin_Scoring-Guide_2.0.pdf

Structured repeated reading. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.aea267.k12.ia.us/english-language-arts/reading/fluency/structured-repeated-reading/

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