ERIC Number: EJ1231128
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Nov
Pages: 13
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0731-9487
EISSN: N/A
Teaching Academic Vocabulary to Sixth-Grade Students with Disabilities
O'Connor, Rollanda E.; Beach, Kristen D.; Sanchez, Victoria M.; Kim, Joyce J.; Knight-Teague, Kerri; Orozco, Guadalupe; Jones, Brian T.
Learning Disability Quarterly, v42 n4 p231-243 Nov 2019
Adolescents with disabilities have great difficulty with academic content in middle school, and their teachers have difficulty teaching them to understand and use academic language. We taught teachers of sixth-grade students with learning disabilities, more than half of whom were also English language learners (ELLs), to implement about 15 min of daily interactive vocabulary instruction in their intact special education English/language arts classes. Three schools were assigned randomly to treatment (two schools) or control conditions (one school, 52 students total). We developed instructional routines to introduce four new words per week in three 4-week units to test for replicability. ANCOVAs (with each cycle's pretest and intelligence quotient as covariates) were conducted on taught vocabulary, all of which favored the treatment condition with effect sizes ranging 0.6 to 0.7 per cycle. Near-transfer effects to vocabulary usage were weaker, with significant effects in the last two cycles. Effects were similar for students with disabilities who were ELLs and native English speakers. Treated students maintained their knowledge of words 4 to 24 weeks following the close of treatment.
Descriptors: Students with Disabilities, Grade 6, Academic Language, Vocabulary, English Language Learners, English Instruction, Learning Disabilities, Special Education, Middle School Students, Middle School Teachers, Fidelity, Instructional Effectiveness
SAGE Publications and Hammill Institute on Disabilities. 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Tel: 800-818-7243; Tel: 805-499-9774; Fax: 800-583-2665; e-mail: journals@sagepub.com; Web site: http://sagepub.com
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Education; Grade 6; Intermediate Grades; Middle Schools; Junior High Schools; Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: Institute of Education Sciences (ED)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: California
IES Funded: Yes
Grant or Contract Numbers: R324A160019