KIM BRUTON
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Donahue, M.L., Pidek, C.M. Listening Comprehension and Paraphrasing in Content-Area Classrooms. Journal of Childhood Communication Disorders, 1993, Vol. 15, n2, 35-42.
In this article, oral paraphrase is presented as an informal and versatile strategy for assessing and enhancing listening comprehension in mainstreamed students with language/learning disabilities. Approaches to assessing the listening comprehension demands of individual classrooms and using various dimensions of paraphrasing to enhance language comprehension and production skills in content areas are presented.
Hellekson, L E. , Feitler, F. C. Positive Effects of Teaching Emergent Readers To Verbalize Effective Reading Strategies. Conference Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association. April 1994.
This study examined the effect of the active verbalization model in a supplemental reading program to develop metacognitive learning ability in emergent readers. The teacher in the study used paraphrasing for clarification when she was trying to understand a child's response to a question. The study group on the children taught paraphrasing skills for reading and a control group was not taught these skills. The paraphrasing group was able to perform better on comprehension tests, they self-corrected errors in reading, and they were better on doze tasks. The control group was more concerned with decoding skills and were less likely to use two or more reading strategies to bring meaning to text. The study showed that paraphrasing allows students to explain their reasoning. Paraphrasing was also described as an active listening skill, so children learn to attend to strategies used in reading.
Mutin, D.G. Counseling and Therapy Skills. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, Inc., 1983.
This book, which focuses on counseling and therapy, gives insight into the kind of listening skills that are most affective when trying to gain meaningful understanding of what a person is trying to say. It provides strategies for listening and also for revoicing to give the speaker an opportunity to add on to, or refute, what the listener is hearing.
O'Connor, M.C., Michaels, S. Aligning Academic Task and Participation Status through Revoicing: Analysis of a Classroom Discourse Strategy. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, Dec. 1993, Vol. 24 n4, 318-35.
Revoicing as a classroom technique is considered. Examples are given through written dialogue. A student makes a proposition, another student uses revoicing to say what he/she thinks is being said (using inference words such a so, then, you're saying) and then the first student has the opportunity to affirm or deny the inference. If the source affirms the inference, it's implicated that he or she will provide evidence for utterances. This article is important because it show the need for listening, and for backing up what one says. It also shows that revoicing can lend power and authority to the students relatively weak voice, while at the same time allowing the student to retain some ownership over the reformulation.
Schiffrin, D. Cohesion in Everyday Discourse: The Role of Paraphrase. Sociolinguistic Working Paper Number 97. Southwest Educational Development Lab., Austin, TX. July 1982.
The discussion is based on 255 paraphrase sequences, discourses in which a speaker paraphrases an already presented proposition after some other discourse material. It suggests that there are four functions of paraphrasing (intensification, subordination, transition marking, and conversational indexing) and each concerns very different levels of discourse organization. This study gives one side of the discourse, that of the person paraphrasing him/herself. It shows that paraphrasing directs a discourse and can alter a speaker's tone or point.
Shugarman, S.L., Hurst J.B. Purposeful Paraphrasing: Promoting a Nontrivial Pursuit for Meaning. Journal of Reading Feb. 1986, Vol. 29 n5, 396-99.
This is a how to article that gives a dozen concrete suggestions for using paraphrase writing to teach content, better reading, and interpretive thinking. It shows how to teach students to put text into their own words. It uses writing as a restatement of author's meaning.
Torrance, N., at al. The Development of the Distinction between Paraphrase and Exact Wording in the Recognition of Utterances. April 1992. Conference Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Education Research Association.
This study used native English speakers from a variety of backgrounds ranging in age from 3 to 9 years old. Stories involving Sesame Street characters were developed that contained common events. An utterance from one of the characters became a target for paraphrasing. There were four possible conditions for each of the test stories: true paraphrase, false paraphrase, true verbatim, and false verbatim. Results showed that the children could not judge two utterances to be different in form yet equivalent in meaning until 6 or 7 years of age. Results also indicated that younger children had particular difficulty in excluding a good paraphrase when they were asked to accept only a verbatim utterance.
Julie A. Ferris
Dugan, E., Kamps, D., Leonard, B., Watkins, N., Rheinberger, A. & Stackhaus, J. (1995). Effects of cooperative learning groups during social studies for students with autism and fourth grade peers. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 28(2), 175-188.
This study measured the effects of cooperative learning groups in a regular education classroom with two students with autism as participants. The purpose was to contribute to research done in the domain of instructional procedures to promote academic and social integration of students with disabilities. The effect of cooperative learning groups on academic engagement and performance, social and behavioral skills for the entire class, and peer interactions was assessed. Both lesson-related and teamwork-building activities were used. The dependent measures were pretests and posttests, academic engagement probes (i.e. writing, participation, passive attention to tasks, and self-stimulation), student interactions (initiations and responses), consumer satisfaction surveys (teacher reactions), and reliability (triangulation of data). Students with autism and general education peers scored higher on weekly quizzes, increased their academic engagement, and showed substantial differences in student interactions during cooperative learning when compared with the baseline study. The results of the research showed that cooperative learning activities were beneficial for students with autism and their peers during social studies instruction.
Florio-Ruane, S. (1987). Sociolinguistics for educational researchers. American Educational Research Journa4 24(2), 185-197.
This paper was written with three goals in mind-providing a brief overview of sociolinguistics, describing the relevance of sociolinguistics when examining a classroom, and offering ways to assess the capacity of a study using sociolinguistics. Florio-Ruane defines sociolinguistics and relates this area to a classroom, which she labels a "speech community". When using sociolinguistics to understand a classroom through research, three areas of study must be focused upon-the structure of classroom discourse, access to school knowledge and differential treatment, and the conversational nature of learning and teaching. Sociolinguistic research also involves studying patterns of conversation and how knowledge that is constructed through discourse is transferred to beginning conversationalists. This is done mainly through comparative studies. She also proposes a set of maxims for guiding sociolinguistic research-go to the people in the speech community; pay attention to what they say and do; plan your recording carefully through focusing and segmentation; proceed inductively by using reproducible behavior records, triangulating data, and cross-checking references; be alert to interpretation by being self-conscious; find locally meaningful units of analysis; balance explanation with narration and transcripts; look for disconfirming evidence and discrepant cases; and think about your informants. The validity of the researcher's information depends upon taking all of these maxims into consideration when compiling his/her report.
Forman, E. A., & McCormick, D. E. (1995). Discourse analysis: A sociocultural perspective. Remedial and Special Education, 16(3), 325-336.
This paper was written in order to outline important concepts of sociocultural theory, present discourse analysis tools, and review research studies involving theory and methodology. Forman, et. al. define discourse analysis along with discussing Vygotsky' 5 Zone of Proximal Development and how it relates to learning. The methodology of discourse analysis has five steps-identify a research question, collect data, analyze the data, display the information, and interpret the data. Several studies are cited, including information on the social construction of disabilities. They claim that if disabilities can be maximized by social interaction, they can also be minimized. Another study analyzes how instructional interactions can be affected by cultural and/or linguistic differences between teachers and students. This may lead to the students inability to learn based on the ways he/she is being taught. Through the use of discourse analysis, researchers have gained new insights into remedial and special education, which will lead to increasing success m these areas of instruction.
Kamps, D., Barbetta, P. M., Leonard, B. R., & Deiquadri, J. (1994). Classwide peer tutoring: An integration strategy to improve reading skills and promote peer interactions among students with autism and general education peers. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 27(1), 49-61.
This article details the effects of elementary classroom peer tutoring in traditional reading instruction for three high-functioning students with autism and their classroom peers in integrated, general education classrooms. There are many citations supporting the idea that cooperative learning has been used with varying levels of student success when compared with traditional instruction in many curricular areas. The characteristics of autism suggest that high-functioning students with autism are excellent candidates for programs designed to promote both academic and social functioning which will help to ensure successful inclusion in general education classrooms. Cooperative learning produced an increase for both students with autism and general education peers in reading rates, reading comprehension, and social interaction time. Consequently, cooperative learning was shown to be an effective method for increasing the academic and social skills of students with autism and their regular education peers within integrated, general education classrooms
Kamps, D., Walker, D., Maher, J., & Rotholz, D. (1992). Academic and environmental effects of small group arrangements in classrooms for students with autism and other developmental disabilities. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 22(2), 277-293.
This study compares the performance of students with autism in one-to-one instruction and small group activities. Within each classroom, three to five students were taught in small group formats and on-task behavior was one of the student measures. Behavior was considered to be on-task if the student was looking at or responding to the teacher, working with materials, or looking at a peer responding. The data that was collected on pre- and post-test scores indicated approximately 10% higher gains for students involved in small group activities. The percentage of correct student responses also increased over the control group. Students with autism made a successful transition from one-to-one to small group interaction and showed significant gains over the control group. These studies support research literature, indicating that students with autism can have success when instructed in small group arrangements.
Kamps, D. M, Leonard, B. R., Vernon, S., Dugan, E. P., & Deiquadri, J. C. (1992). Teaching social skills to students with autism to increase peer interactions in an integrated first-grade classroom. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 25(2), 281 - 288
This study investigated the use of social skills groups for high-functioning students with autism to increase and improve social interaction skills with peers. The dependent measures used were social interaction (initiations and responses), social skills behavior (sharing materials, seeking or offering help, initiating, listening and responding, interacting with one or more peers, giving and accepting compliments, accepting peer ideas, and inviting others to join in activities), and interobserver agreement (two observations concurrently). The findings indicated that social skills training for students with autism conducted along with general education peers was a useful method for increasing time engaged in, the frequency of; and duration of social interaction for children in play groups. The most useful information in this study was the criteria and methods of using the data collected in analysis.
Dugan, E., Kamps, D., Leonard, B., Watkins, N., Rheinberger, A. & Stackhaus, J. (1995). Effects of cooperative learning groups during social studies for students with autism and fourth grade peers. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 28(2), 175-188.
This study measured the effects of cooperative learning groups in a regular education classroom including two students with autism as participants. The purpose was to contribute to research done in the domain of instructional procedures to promote academic and social integration of students with disabilities. The effect of cooperative learning groups on academic engagement and performance, social and behavioral skills for the entire class, and peer interactions was assessed. Both lesson-related and teamwork-building activities were used. The dependent measures were pretests and posttests, academic engagement probes (i.e. writing, participation, passive attention to tasks, and self-stimulation), student interactions (initiations and responses), consumer satisfaction surveys (teacher reactions), and reliability (triangulation of data). Students with autism and general education peers scored higher on weekly quizzes, increased their academic engagement, and showed substantial differences in student interactions during cooperative learning when compared with the baseline study. The results of the research showed that cooperative learning activities were beneficial for students with autism and their peers during social studies instruction.
Slavin, R. E. (1983). Effects of cooperative learning on mainstreamed academically handicapped children. Department of Education Final Report
The subjects in this study were 1371 students (113 of which were special education students) in third, fourth, and fifth grade mathematics classes. Students in cooperative learning environments (both handicapped and non-handicapped) gained more than twice as many grade equivalents than the control group students who were receiving mathematics instruction in a traditional setting. The study showed that when handicapped students work in small groups with non-handicapped students, they are better accepted by their peers. It also showed that academic needs of low-achieving handicapped students can be met in the regular classroom by looking at all students as "special" learners and tailoring instruction to meet each individual's needs.
Slavin, R. E. (1982). Effects of cooperative learning and individualized instruction on the social acceptance, achievement, and behavior of mainstreamed students. Department of Education, Report No.327.
The premise behind this research is that mainstreamed students learn better than do similar students who are taught in self-contained classrooms. Cooperative learning teams were heterogeneous groups which included special education students. Results were measured by the following criteria: classroom behavior, self-confidence, friendships, and negative peer behavior. The experimental group exhibited greater gains in each of these areas. Mainstreamed students were also less likely to be management problems. However, this study failed to find differences in mathematics achievement between the experimental and the control groups, but it did have a positive effect on the achievement of the entire class.
Slavin, R. E. (1987). Cooperative learning: Can students help students learn? Instructor, 96(7), 74-78.
Slavin uses Student Team Learning to facilitate heterogeneous groups of students to encourage and help each other master skills and content which teachers present. Students reinforce what they have just learned by explaining concepts to teammates who need assistance, sharing ideas, or reinterpreting what the teacher has presented. He says that teachers must have a team goal to motivate students to care about how each individual on the team is doing. There are three concepts central to Student Team Learning: team rewards, individual accountability, and equal opportunities for success. Student Team Learning classes gained more in achievement than did students in traditionally taught classes working on the same objectives. This method has often been used in classrooms with mainstreamed students with academic handicaps and has shown to be effective in improving these students' achievement and behavior. This and other research consistently shows that cooperative learning benefits all students.
Teasley, S.D., (1995). The role of talk in children's peer collaborations. Developmental Psychology, 31(2), 207-220.
This study focused on the role that talk plays in children's peer collaborations. Teasley details two areas of related research, private-speech and talk-aloud studies. Overall the study surmises that talk is related to learning. In this study, collaboration and talk were separate variables and there were four conditions under which students were observed-students who could talk to themselves as they worked alone, students who worked alone but could not talk, students who worked in pairs and talked to one another, and students who worked in pairs but were not allowed to talk to one another. The results showed that children who talked either alone or with their partner produced greater results in their task than the students who did not talk at all. However, the students who talked with a partner had even greater results than their peers who talked alone. Consequently, collaboration was found to increase the chance that students would engage in the types of talk that lead to an increase in learning.
The following citations are books that I am currently reading and plan on using in my final data, but I have yet to finish:
Hart, C. A. (1993). A parent's guide to autism. New York: Simon & Schuster Inc.
Powers, M.D. (1989). Children with autism: A parents guide. USA: Woodbine House.
Tannen, D. (1989). Talking voices: Repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Wing, L. (1972). Autistic children: A guide for parents and professionals. New York: Carol Publishing Group.
The following articles have been ordered through the MSU library, therefore I am unable to complete my annotated bibliography with them included:
Gumperz, J. (1995). Children's discourse and inferential practices in cooperative learning. Discourse Processes, 19(1), 133-147.
Kamps, D. M. (1995). Cooperative learning groups in reading: An integration strategy for students with autism and general classroom peers. Behavioral Disorders, 21(1), 89-109.
Kamps, D. M. (1990). A comparison of instructional arrangements for children with autism served in a public school setting. Education and Treatment of Children, 13(3), 197-215.
Leanne M. Tormen
Literature Review
Hough, Ruth A., Nurss, Joanne R., and Wood, Delores; "Tell Me A Story: Making Opportunities For Elaborated Language In Early Childhood Classrooms", Young Children, V34, N1, November, 1987.
This article describes a study involving the use of three different tasks intended to stimulate story language in children from kindergarten through third grade. The three tasks or prompts were a single picture, a wordless book and telling an original story.
The study concluded that when children were prompted by a single picture, by describing the picture but not telling a story about it. The children's responses were short, containing a small amount of words. When the children were prompted by telling a story using a wordless picture book, the responses were quite similar. The "stories" contained a small amount of words that were primarily a description of the events seen in the pictures of the book. When the children were asked to tell an original story, they were more apt to tell long, involved stories with a clear plot, and a series of events.
According to the authors, pictures and wordless picture books are helpful idea prompts for telling stories. If one is interested in encouraging children to tell stories with a conventional beginning, characters and a sequence of events, asking them to invent their own stories is the best approach.
Avery, Carol; "Awesome Adjectives," Instructor, V102, N9, May/June 1993.
This author explains that when children are encouraged to use adjectives in their writing, they sometimes string several of them together in order to make their piece of writing longer. She suggests helping the children to find the unusual and most relevant word rather than describing the most evident attributes of the object. For example, when describing a kitten, instead of describing it as soft (this could be any kitten) describe it personally. Tell about its color. If you just got it, describe it as new.
Avery's message is that we must teach children to "use adjectives for the specific purpose of enhancing meaning". She suggests showing the children how successful authors such as Robert Blake use adjectives that are essential to the meaning of the story.
Lauri Ford
Literature Review
Effects of the Computerized Accelerated Reader Program on Reading Achievement by Janie Peak
"The objective of this study was to determine if the Accelerated Reader Program significantly improved Reading skills of middle-school students. "This was an interesting study to read about because it was based on essentially the same program that we use at Munn. The results were that the program did result in improved CAT reading scores. Peak states at the end of her paper, "This program can be assessed as an excellent motivational tool that develops critical-thinking and reading skills as well." Concerns she raised, that I have as well, were: the importance of the enthusiasm for the program generated by the teachers involved with it, the need for an adequate number of books at the appropriate reading level and about topics of interest to students, and the natural enthusiasm generated by a new program using computers versus the "same old" methods. what she did not address was what to do with those students who were not reached in the AR program used in the traditional classroom setting, which is what I am trying to address in my study of our pull out program.
Improving Reading Comprehension Achievement of Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Grade Underachievers
This was a very helpful study to read about. In the first place it addressed the process used to improve reading comprehension for sixth through eighth grade underachievers, and it is the underachiever in sixth grade who I am focusing on in my study. It focused on students who were achieving below their anticipated ability in reading comprehension, but were not receiving special education services. She states, "the problem of under achievement, especially related to reading comprehension, had several points of impact: (a) the value of reading frequently, (b) student attitude, (c) the importance of role modeling and providing opportunities to read, (d) the influence of family background, and (e) the significance of motivation and incentives for reading." The above criteria is what we base our program on. This study used the following strategies to improve comprehension and attitudes toward reading: "silent sustained reading, Accelerated Reader, a campaign for public library membership, a home reading contract, a read-aloud program, and a novel-based approach to reading instruction." We use many of the above strategies in our program, too. I think an important part of this study was that she looked at the difference between anticipated and actual achievement in reading comprehension. In my school these are the kids who often slip through the cracks. They have not met the criteria for special education services but they are not reaching their potentials. She states, "... if students possess the cognitive abilities required to read, yet elect not to develop these abilities by engaging in reading, their reading potential will not be achieved.... Several studies have revealed convincing data that suggests students who engage in voluntary reading significantly outperform students who do not on many different measures of comprehension." She found a significant decrease in the numbers not achieving their anticipated levels of comprehension after increasing their reading using The Accelerated Reader program. She also observed a great increase in library circulation which is something we experienced at Munn (around 100%). Also important was her statement, "Teachers must give students the opportunity to read in school." Erazmus (1987:13) believes that "there are so many distractions outside of school that teachers cannot depend on students reading outside the classroom." (this was also found to be the case in the next study I read which I will discuss later) This ties into her findings that students were not taught at home to want to read. She found that the targeted students in both sixth and eighth grade appeared to enjoy reading more than the targeted seventh grade students. This is something we have noticed at Munn and were unsure of the reason. Was it do to teachers' involvement with the program or age of students or what? She also states, "...exposure to books impacts reading scores in a positive way. Students need less drills and skills and more "real reading" and role modeling. Anderson, Wilson, and Filding (1986) agreed, both teachers and parents need to give a higher priority to promoting book reading." Again, reinforcement that our program is on the right track. other points of interest that she raised were: from Lohr and McGrevin, "Schools must focus not only on illiteracy--those who can't read--but also aliteracy-those who don't read.", Howard, "nothing builds reading ability as much as time spent reading.", w . the lag in their reading achievement becomes greater in later elementary school grades and high school. These findings created a sense of urgency for at-risk students.", "sixth grade may be the pivotal year, the last period of maximal influence toward reading and school achievement" (very important information for me, a sixth grade teacher), "self-selection may be the best way to increase a student's love of reading. ", "choice is important, as is the availability of a broad spectrum of materials.", "Perhaps the most important factor in the process of motivating children to read for pleasure is the teacher" (Perez, 1986: 9), and Howard (1988), "stressed the value of positive feedback to stimulate poor readers to read more." All of the above seems to fit into what we are trying to do with our pull out program. Students who were lost in sheer numbers within a large classroom can succeed using many of the above strategies when placed in close contact with a teacher using the strategies and especially a teacher who lets them know that she cares about them and their reading success.
Using the Accelerated Reader and Other Strategies and Varied Techniques to Improve the Reading Attitudes of Fifth Grade Students By Debris McKnight
This was a short report on a study that dealt with a reading program designed to improve reading attitudes among fifth grade children. McKnight, also, used the Accelerated Reading Program. Her hope was to decrease TV viewing time and replace it with time spent reading for pleasure. This did not occur. This also ties in with the findings in article #2 that as teachers we cannot expect much home support for middle schoolers in motivation for reading. However, her study did show improved attitudes toward reading and students did read more. Since I believe, as did the researchers in the other two articles I wrote about, that attitude leads to more reading which leads to better comprehension then again this program seems successful. She also reported students increased the time they were able to successfully sustain silent reading. This is something I have observed with my students as well.
These three articles gave substance to many of the ideas and beliefs I have been formulating based on our use of the Accelerated Reader Program over the last 4 years. what I am trying to do now is take those few students who are still not achieving with this program used in a large classroom setting and help them to reach their reading potential. Many of the strategies are the same, they are just intensified and then implemented in a much smaller group setting. Time will tell if this pull out program will have any success with either reading comprehension or reading attitudes.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
McKnight, D. (1992). Using the Accelerated Reader and other strategies and varied techniques to improve the reading attitudes of fifth grade students. Dissertation Abstracts International 043.
Peak, J. (1993, February). Effects of the computerized Accelerated Reader Program on reading achievement. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Eastern Educational Research Association, Clearwater Beach.
Turner, T. (1992). Improving reading comprehension achievement of sixth, seventh, and eighth grade underachievers. Research project, Nova University.