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ERIC Number: EJ1095788
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2014
Pages: 18
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0034-0510
EISSN: N/A
Road to the Code: Examining the Necessity and Sufficiency of Program Components
Schmitz, Stephanie L.; Loy, Sedona
Reading Improvement, v51 n4 p341-358 Win 2014
As the ability to read proficiently is essential for success both in and out of the school setting, literacy has become an area of particular focus in today's classrooms. While recent assessments indicate that students are making progress in the area of reading (e.g., National Assessment of Educational Progress [NAEP], 2011), there continues to be many children who encounter difficulty when learning to read (Moats 1999). Some children enter kindergarten with few early literacy skills, which can result in significant difficulty catching up to typically developing peers without some type of intensive intervention (Good, Simmons, & Smith, 1998; Moats, 1999), including identification for special education services (Whitehurst & Lonigan, 2001). Such facts indicate the need for early prevention and intervention efforts in reading. Due to the important role of phonological awareness in the reading process, a number of interventions and programs have been created to develop and strengthen young children's phonological awareness skills (NRP, 2000; Santi, Manchetti, & Edwards, 2004). While many of these programs are described as being research-based (NRP, 2000), few studies examining the effectiveness of these programs were found in a review of the literature. Several of the phonological awareness programs have been described as including components and/or activities that have been found to be effective contributors to the effectiveness of phonological awareness programs (Santi et al., 2004).The program used in this study, "Road to the Code" (Blachman, Ball, Black, & Tangel, 2000), is described as being based upon scientifically- based research and to include several of the components that were identified in the literature as being effective contributors to the development of phonological awareness. The purpose of this study was to both replicate results from a dissertation study (Schmitz, 2011) that evaluated the effectiveness of the Road to the Code program (Blachman et al, 2000) and to extend it by determining the necessity and sufficiency of the program components. Three hypotheses were generated for this current study based upon both the results from the dissertation study, as well as from information gathered through a recent literature review. Results of the dissertation study indicated that most students made gains on measured skills throughout the intervention phase that carried into the maintenance phase, but did not provide any information regarding the effectiveness of the individual components included in each lesson of the program. Therefore, it was hypothesized that students receiving instruction in either a singular component of, or through the entire "Road to the Code" program, would improve their phonological awareness skills. A second hypothesis, based upon recent research examining the effects of intervention components on students' phonological awareness skills (i.e., Lonigan et al., 2013; Bowyer-Crane et al., 2008), was that students receiving instruction in one of the program components would show the largest gains on the skill(s) targeted by that particular component, and these gains would be greater than those of the students receiving instruction on the other individual, program components. Third and finally, it was hypothesized that those children participating in the full Road to the Code program would demonstrate comparable or greater growth with all measured phonological awareness skills when compared with the other groups due to their consistent practice with all components targeted by this program. Results from this study indicated that most students who received the full Road to the Code program (FP) typically made more progress than students who only received one component.
Project Innovation, Inc. P.O. Box 8508 Spring Hill Station, Mobile, AL 36689-0508. Tel: 251-343-1878; Fax: 251-343-1878; Web site: http://www.projectinnovation.biz/ri.html
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Kindergarten; Primary Education; Early Childhood Education; Elementary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS)
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A