Journal of Undergraduate Research
Volume 8, Issue 4 - March / April 2007

Small-Group Literacy Intervention for 2nd Grade English Language Learners

Nathalie Sosa

INTRODUCTION

According to the US Department of Education, about 1 in every 10 students that enrolled in public schools in 2003 were English Language Learners (ELL). There are more than 5 ½ million language minority students in the United States, of which 80% are native Spanish speakers (McCardle & Leung, 2006). On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which excludes students with the lowest levels of English proficiency from testing, only 44% of Hispanic fourth graders scored at or above the “basic” level, in comparison to 75% of Caucasian students (Slavin & Cheung, 2003). Our federal education policy has set goals for this Limited English Proficient subgroup under Title 1 and III of the No Child Left Behind Act. The No Child Left Behind Act mandates that by 2014 all English language learners, regardless of the amount of time they have been in the United States, pass their states accountability tests (Wright, 2006). In the meantime, these students are expected to make adequate yearly progress toward proficiency.
There is a great deal of evidence from the field of Linguistics that indicates more time is needed for a student to be considered fully proficient in a new language (Solano-Flores, 2006). Although the testing of Limited English Proficiency students requires “reasonable accommodations,” the law does not define what these accommodations should be. States vary substantially on the accommodation policies they are implementing for this reason (Wright, 2006).

Yet another challenge the English Language Learners have to face is the fact that they are all grouped together for instruction. This grouping assumes that learning English is no different for a native speaker of Greek than for a native speaker of Thai. The current reliance on the English-speaking literacy industry implies that literacy practices found to be efficient with monolingual English-speaking students will be equally effective with native Spanish speakers with no need for modification (Escamilla 2006). On the other hand, research shows that there is a certain developmental pattern that is followed by language learners regardless of their first language background (Ellis, 1997). This acquisition order is not only consistent among second language learners; it also follows a pattern much like that of children acquiring their first language.

The importance of determining the most successful literacy model for English Language Learners is unquestionable. American schools cannot achieve equal opportunity for all if they do not succeed with the children of immigrants (Slavin & Cheung, 2003). Instructional practices determined to be effective for teaching native English speakers have also been found to be effective for English language learners (Fitzgerald 1995). The model used for the current study, the University of Florida Literacy Initiative (UFLI) small-group tutoring model, has proven its effectiveness with students identified as below grade-level in their reading abilities. Mastropieri and Scruggs (1997) reported that the three teaching strategies shown to improve students’ word recognition skills and reading fluency (skills which are essential for reading comprehension) are: vocabulary instruction, error correction, and repeated readings. The UFLI model focuses on fluency building, which research indicates leads to an increase in reading comprehension and vice versa (Tam, Heward, & Heng, 2006). Fluency is defined as the speed and accuracy with which students read text orally (Chard, Vaughn, & Tyler, 2002). Tam et al. (2006) demonstrate that ELL students benefit more from repeated readings that require them to re-read the same passage because they have more opportunities for massed practice on familiar materials. In the study, English language learners were provided with extended time for literacy instruction in a one-on-one tutorial.

Re-reading familiar text and working with familiar words to build on existing knowledge are important components of the UFLI model. Students are provided with extended time for literacy instruction and explicit instruction in a small-group environment. This intervention emphasizes phonological awareness with a strong reading-writing connection. Students also read new text and work with new words in order to expand their developing knowledge and the application of their fluency skills (Lane, Pullen, & Hayes, 2005). The intervention study discussed in this paper seeks to determine if the UFLI model is useful for English Language Learners. Specifically, this intervention seeks to find if this model helps to improve the early literacy skills of English Language Learners from a variety of first language backgrounds.

METHOD

Participants and Setting

The students in the study attend a public elementary school in Gainesville, Florida. Since the study was a single-subject experimental design, the teacher nominated a small number of learners for participation. The nominating teacher was familiar with the UFLI model, so selection was based upon her experience with both the model and the students, which allowed her to determine which students would benefit most from the intervention. Six 2nd grade students were recommended who represented the following countries as their nations of origin: Mexico, Thailand, China, and Ukraine. All of the students read below grade level, though they were not all at precisely the same literacy level. The students were between the ages of 88 and 94 months and had been at the school for an average of 17.6 months.

The intervention study consisted of 40 sessions that were conducted from October - January in the students’ classroom. The setting was appropriate because there were only about fifteen students in the class, and the students not participating in the study were also divided into small groups for their activities. Therefore, the intervention group was simply one of the small groups learning in the ELL classroom. Instruction lasted 35 minutes.

Materials

Students read from leveled books which are text organized into increasingly more difficult levels using criteria such as language predictability, text format, and content. Students move up to a new level once several of them demonstrate they can read at the current level with a minimum of 95% accuracy. Each student is provided with a metal tray and magnetic letters in order to participate in word manipulation. Each student has a folder with paper so that they can participate in the writing portion of the intervention.

Procedure

There is a standard routine for each session. First, the researcher conducts a running record of a previously read book with one child while the other students read quietly to themselves. A running record is a count of the number of words read correctly in the first one-hundred words of text. Students take turns reading for the running record, so that each child participates in this portion of the study an approximately equal number of times.

The next step is introducing a new book to the children. The focus for this introduction is the pictures, not the text. The researcher helps the students notice relevant features in the illustrations and make predictions about the story. This portion of the session is limited to no more than 2 minutes. Then the students read the new story chorally. Afterwards, the students read the story a second time, with each student taking turns to read a page of the text.

Before the session, the researcher selects two challenging words for the students to manipulate using their magnetic letters on their metal trays. The magnetic letters are used to demonstrate: how letters come together to form words, similarities and differences between a new word and a word that the child already knows, and forming word families using portions of the new word as a base. An example is to introduce the new word ‘that,’ whose word family would include: at, mat, and sat. 

Next, the students use their notebooks and make Elkonin (phonemic) boxes for a new word. Phonemic boxes break apart a word according to the phonemes, or sounds, that comprise the word. For example, in the word ‘that,’ there would be three boxes with the following sounds respectively in each box: /th/ /a/ /t/. Then the students would copy the word as a whole underneath the boxes to practice their spelling and recognition of the word. The last step of the tutoring session was for the students to write a sentence using the new word. The researcher would read each student’s sentence and correct any errors, after which the student would write their sentence again with the corrections. 

Measurement

Pre- and post-testing measures are conducted with the students.  All of the participants read three oral reading fluency passages of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS).  DIBELS passages are timed, one-minute measures. DIBELS passages are administered throughout the course of the intervention at least once a week to regularly monitor the students’ progress in oral reading fluency. Reading fluency is one of the defining characteristics of good readers, and a lack of fluency is a common characteristic of poor readers. Differences in reading fluency not only distinguish good readers from poor, but a lack of reading fluency is also a reliable predictor of reading comprehension problems (Stanovich, 1991) In this study, the students read passages at a 2nd grade level because this is the level that these students are assessed in school even though their reading is not on grade level.

An additional pre- and post-assessment tool was the Jump Start in Reading, a measure that assesses pre-literature abilities that have been linked to future reading attainment (Pullen, Lane, & Hayes, 2005). We gauged metalinguistic abilities by using the Onset/Rime test as well as the Phoneme level test. Additionally, we tested the children for their understanding of alphabetic principle using the Letter-Sound Sequencing test and the Invented Spelling test. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Fourth Edition (PPVT-IV) was administered to assess the students’ vocabulary. The last measure was the Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE), where we utilized the Sight Word Efficiency measure and the Phonemic Decoding Efficiency measure.

RESULTS

Although we began the study with six subjects, final results are reported for only five students because one child was frequently absent. The DIBELS measure taken throughout the course of the study demonstrated that the number of words read per minute increased an average of 2.55 words weekly. This is a noteworthy average increase, since the expected rate of weekly improvement for second grade students is 1.8 words (Fuchs & Fuchs, ?). The number of oral reading errors decreased an average of .25 words weekly. For graphs illustrating each student’s weekly oral reading fluency scores, see Figures 1-5. 

Figure 1. Student 1 Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills Progress
Note: Blue dots indicate number of words read correctly. Red X’s indicate number of oral reading errors.

 

Figure 2. Student 2 Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills Progress
Note: Blue dots indicate number of words read correctly. Red X’s indicate number of oral reading errors.

 

Student 3. Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills Progress
Note: Blue dots indicate number of words read correctly. Red X’s indicate number of oral reading errors.

 

Student 4. Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills Progress
Note: Blue dots indicate number of words read correctly. Red X’s indicate number of oral reading errors.

 

Figure 5. Student 5 Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills Progress
Note: Blue dots indicate number of words read correctly. Red X’s indicate number of oral reading errors.

On the DIBELS measure, Student one had a pre-test median score of 25 words read per minute and a post-test median score of 84 words. Student two rose from a pre-test median score of 11 to a post-test median score of 25. The pre-test score for student three was 78 and the post-test score was 140. Student four had a pre-test score of 96 and a post-test score of 131. For student five, the pre-test DIBELS score was 10 and the post-test score was 48.

Student one improved on the PPVT-IV from a pre-test score of 85 to a post-test score of 106. This subject’s TOWRE sight word efficiency improved from a score of 19 to a score of 34; the phonemic decoding efficiency score improved from 1 to 3.  Student two’s PPVT-IV score rose from 83 to 104. The TOWRE sight word efficiency score rose from 16 to 20, while the phonemic decoding efficiency score dropped from 5 to 3. For the PPVT-IV measure, student three rose from 73 to 84. For the TOWRE sight word efficiency measure, this subject’s score rose from 50 to 52. The phonemic decoding efficiency score rose from 15 to 23.  Student four improved on the PPVT-IV from a score of 75 to 79. This subject’s TOWRE sight word efficiency increased from 55 to 61, while the phonemic decoding efficiency decreased from 30 to 19.  For the PPVT-IV measure, student five improved from 87 to 101. This subject increased on the TOWRE sight word efficiency from 15 to 32, and rose in the phonemic decoding efficiency from 3 to 8.  See Table 1 for the average increases for all five subjects on all literacy measures.

DISCUSSION

The results of this intervention indicate that the University of Florida Literacy Initiative model is an effective tool for helping English language learners to improve their literacy skills. Effective early reading instruction incorporates the use of the following skills to promote beginning literacy: (a) awareness of and ability to manipulate phonemes in segmenting and blending strategies; (b) awareness and understanding of letter-sound correspondence; (c) the ability to translate the speech stream sound structures of oral language (phonological processing) into written language; and (d) fluency in decoding words and understanding word meaning (Kamps & Greenwood, 2005). This model incorporated all of these skills into the tutorial, and found impressive improvements in the students’ reading skills.

Though this study presents important findings, it is important to discuss some of the limitations of our data gathering. First of all, we began the study with six students, but one of the student’s data were not included in the results because this student had been absent too frequently throughout the course of the semester. The consistency of our sessions was also an issue.  Ideally, the researcher/tutor meets 3-4 times per week with students.  In reality, there were weeks when the researcher met only once or twice with the students. There were times when the students’ regular classroom teachers requested to have students stay in class as opposed to going to ESOL. Absenteeism and school holidays also affected the consistency of sessions. Moreover, the students were initially at very different fluency levels, and the intervention may have been even more successful if dividing the students into two groups based on their literacy skills had been a possibility.

According to the University of Oregon’s Center on Teaching and Learning (2007), students are categorized into three groups according to their DIBELS Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) scores at the beginning of the year: at risk (ORF < 26); some risk (26 <= ORF < 44); low risk (ORF <= 44). According to the pre-intervention scores, 3 of the 5 students were at risk for reading failure.  By the end of the intervention, according to the middle of the year ORF scores (since the post-intervention tests were conducted in February) one of these students remained at risk (ORF < 52), while one had progressed to some risk (52 <= ORF <68), and the last student was at low risk (ORF >=68) for reading failure. It is important to note that the student who remained at risk at the end of the intervention had an ORF score at the end that was more than triple the pre-intervention score. Additionally, the student whose post-intervention score demonstrated some risk for reading failure had a score that was over ten times higher than the initial ORF score.  The two students who were at low risk for reading failure at the beginning of the year had almost doubled their oral reading fluency scores between the pre- and post-testing. This indicates that the UFLI model is a useful tool for struggling readers who are not of a native-English language background, and at various fluency levels.

The researcher was able to observe changes in the participants’ reading behaviors that are not accounted for in the assessments. At the beginning of the intervention, many students were self-conscious about their reading skills and did not want to read aloud in English, especially in front of their peers. After several weeks of practice, even the lowest-level readers were more confident and had developed strategies (such as sounding out words and looking for context clues) that made them more comfortable with reading aloud. This supports research findings that instructional designs for early intervention based on explicit instructional strategies using multiple exemplars and repeated practice lead to increasingly powerful student outcomes (Engelmann, 1997). Past research has demonstrated more success in students who are exposed to: (a) increased amounts of time in small-groups versus whole-class instruction, (b) increased use of systematic phonics instruction as part of the reading program, and (c) increased amounts of time spent on active reading engagement (Kamps & Greenwood, 2005).

This study included these components and found them to be effective with English language learning students. Further research should be done with more students from diverse backgrounds to make these findings more widely applicable. It would also be interesting to look at the effects of students’ first language background on the UFLI models’ effectiveness. Another important avenue for research is to have English language learners in small-groups comprised of students who are at the same fluency level in order to determine if this is more successful than having learners of various levels working together. The UFLI model has proven to be useful for these five students, and further research will demonstrate whether it can be useful for other English language learners throughout the country.

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