Action Research Project For Reading Recovery Programme

Introduction

This study seeks to analyze critically if the implementation of Reading Recovery early literacy program, which is also identified as lacking phonemic awareness, can improve the ability of foundation students of understanding sounds and words. The study also focuses on determining whether the program can help the foundation learners to meet the expected benchmarks. In this study, I’m going to focus on finding out if the program is effective in guiding English foundation learners as well as assisting them curb inconsistencies in academic success local and foreign speakers educated in only English classroom setups.

How can the Reading Recovery program implementation also identified as lacking awareness of phonemes, assist foundation learners in improving their understanding of sounds and words to achieve the expected national benchmarks.

Literature Review

In my research I used. Ashdown, Jane and Simic, Ognjen (2000). Is Early Literacy Intervention Effective for English Language Learners? to understand the importance of early literacy intervention in learning English language.

Secondly,Bianco, Joseph Lo and Scrull, Janet (2005). Successful Engagement in Early Literacy Learning: Implications, Practices and Insights. Catholic Education Office and The University of Melbourne, was very helpful in my study as it discussed the effects of practicing early literacy learning.

My third reference was.Chabot, Jeanette M (2010). Phonological Awareness Interventions for Students At-Risk Of Reading Failure. Concordia University, Portland.This book analyzed how students with reading problems are assisted by phonological awareness.

The book, Cochrane, Kirsty (2009). Teaching Reading –An Action Research Model. Practically Primary Vol. 14 No. 3 helped me in my research because it showed a model of action research of teaching reading. I was able to see the relationship between the two aspects.

The book, Davidson, Chris (1979). The Development of Associations for Remedial Teachers in Australia. Learning Difficulties Australia Bulletin. Volume 47, No 2, Winter Evidence from Reading Recovery. Literacy Teaching and Learning. Vol.5, No. 1 provided useful information on the difficulties facing learners in Australia and the efficiency of Reading Recovery in solving the problems.

I also used Hamilton, Gwendolyn Elizabeth (2007). The Effectiveness of Phonological Awareness Instruction in Improving Reading Scores. The College at Brockport: State University of New York to understand the how effective Phonological Awareness can be in improving the reading skills of learners.

From Hempenstall, Kerry (2015). Phonemic awareness: Yea, nay? (Part 2). Learning Difficulties Australia Bulletin. Volume 47, No 2, Winter, I was able to know that learning challenges in children was closely related to Phonemic awareness.

The book, Iversen, S., & Tunmer, W. E. (1993). Phonological Processing Skills and the Reading Recovery Program. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85(1), 112–126 gave me the knowledge of the relationship between the Reading Recovery program and the skills necessary for phonological processing in learners.

I read North American Trainers Group (2002). What Evidence Says About Reading Recovery.Reading Recovery® Council of North America, Inc. in order to get a scope of the effectiveness of Reading Recovery, which is very vital in my study.

The article,Ng, Ivy (2006). A New Experience Teaching Phonemic Awareness -A Teacher Action Research. was very helpful in my study because it provided new ways of teaching Phonemic awareness.

I used Saskatchewan Learning (2004). Teaching Students with Reading Difficulties and Disabilities A Guide for Educators. Web. Retrieved at: http://www.education.gov.sk.ca/reading-difficulties-disabilities to understand the tactics that teachers should use to help students with disabilities and difficulties in reading.

Last but not least, State Government Victoria (2007). Reading Recovery Guidelines. Department of Education in Early Childhood Development. gave me guidelines for executing Reading Recovery in early learning.

Background of the Study

When investigating whether Reading Recovery is useful for kids learning English as a second language, we found out information and research in two major areas. One, Evaluation studies about the efficiency of classroom literacy guideline on the achievement of reading by children who are learning English. A test of research showing the efficiency of literacy guideline in classroom for English pupils shows that the area is occupied by information regarding the use of a different language from English for guidance reasons. To be specific, scholars have indicated similarities of the success of students with native languages who have acquired classroom guidance through settings of first and second languages.

Notably, detailed studies on the efficiency of this program as an early introduction to all foundation learners and many school programs, willing to deal with the needs of the English pupils together with the kids speaking other languages, have adopted the program as a method and avoidance program which helps literacy guidance in first grade. Trained teachers, specifically equipped for the role, give daily, lessons lasting for half an hour to those children known to have acute literacy problems and perform poorly in reading. The purpose of this program is to make sure that children getting individual teaching keep up as fast as possible with other learners, in a period of 16 to 20 weeks ,to help them move forward to reading and writing in a variety of classroom instructional contexts without requiring more specialized help. My study shows that individual training will help the teacher to closely monitor their students progress step by step. This will therefore assist them to identify areas of weakness and put more effort inorder to catch up with their fellows who are doing better. The classroom Instructional contexts is a set of helpful guidelines drawn by the teachers to assist the learners to learn easily on their own and keep on practicing what they have already been taught. This helps them in improving and doing it on their own without requiring their teacher’s assistance.

Significance of The Study

Several investigations on Reading Recovery have been done by researchers. For instance Researchers like Adams (1990), have demonstrated the effectiveness of Recovery Program. Between 1985 and 1997, a number of 436,249 children in first grade joined the program.60% of the children achieved the benchmark for discontinuing. Meaning the children were over qualified for the program class by the end of the grade. They had the ability to go on and upgrade with literacy studying without requiring more help. Many of the children who remained made an achievement, although they had limited period in the school calendar to finish their programs. The outcomes are good, putting in mind that every child that joined the program was performing poorly in first grade. The English language learned in recent years; the need to upgrade children reading capabilities has been emphasized. For example, teachers oftenly check the learners comprehension in words, reading alphabet, pointing figures, and showing skills in simple arithmetic. kindergarten teachers in California are advised to close the gap of achievement and make sure that all learners are able to perform well in early learning.

Research Question

Is Teaching Phonemic Awareness Important to Foundation Learners?

My study defines what awareness of phonemes is as well as pointing out the importance of teaching it to foundation learners . Goswami and Bryant (1990), define awareness of phonology as worldwide phrase for comprehending word makeup in a language distinct from meaning. This entails identity as well as manipulation of sounds in words via rhyme scheme as well as syllabus. Phonological awareness is complex than phonics and auditory discrimination. It entails analyzing phonemes in words and being able to hear, point out, sample and manipulate different sounds in a language.

Adams (1990), argues that there exists a substantial relation between phonemic knowledge in early stages and later reading ability. My study discusses the importance of teaching foundation learners how to read sounds and interpret their meaning and how it will help and ease their reading ability later in the advanced grades. Kids lacking knowledge of phonemes capabilities can develop reading disorders. Adams thinks that it is vital for kids to be taught the English alphabets and how publications show verbal words. Failure to hear as well as interpret sounds, children are not able to simplify sounds and letters. Because of the important role of the awareness of phonemes in early reading grades, this program needs teachers to coach children rhyming as well as sampling syllables to help them do well in the Literacy Assessment of our district.

Children develop abilities to write, draw and alphabetical knowledge first before phonemes. They learn differentiating letters and writing names before knowing rhyme schemes and letters, particularly for English pupils. In my thought, this is due to letters setting symbols following a particular sequence and are stable for young scholars to point out. Also, parents teach children to know their names as well as individual letters before commencing school. Laminack (1990) noted that kids have the ability to read names from graphic presentations or commercials before recognizing letter sounds. Therefore, he teaches alphabets at the start of the school year before other concepts. However, according to results from tests from the previous years, learners did not perform well on pointing out rhyming, blending as well as matching sounds. He had no knowledge as to why learners had problems in learning phonemes.

Adams (1990), points out that children require speech awareness to be able to produce sound in learning phonemes. However, when learners learn speech and Communication, they do not need to be aware of phonemes to be eloquent and understand language. Speech flows automatically instead of integrating words into their structures. Learners recognize words as wholes as opposed to segmented units. Children need the ability to grasp the sounds in speech; failure to that, they face problems in separating words quickly. Phonemic awareness is a hard task, especially for blossoming kids.

Separating sound and speech should be taught to children in depth and should be systematic. However, there is a need to plan lessons well and present them in a developmental sequence.

People rarely pay attention to nonspeech sounds because a sound is natural to their ears. For instance, we rarely hear sounds in our environment such as sounds made by snipping scissors. Children need to practice listening keenly to nonspeech sounds through activities carried out in small groups and listening games.

It is clear that Phonemes are abstract and so should not be presented to children solely as objects. Teachers should begin with teaching children ear training. By so doing, children perfect their listening skills; they learn to differentiate sounds while opening and closing their eyes. They can identify and respond to different sounds in their environment.

Future research should take a leap further, in trying to analyze the intensity of the effects of the specific causes at both learners and site. Other learner traits include, ethnicity, origin, socio-economic and cultural status as well as the nature of students’ local language, are of importance to students performance . Features of sites for reading recovery, such as program implementation period, coverage levels, experience of the teachers, location, and district demographics explain the performance of students.

Research Methodology

The method used to collect data for my study was reading written literature as I have indicated on my literature review and observation method in classrooms. A satisfactory case can be derived from learners and sites interaction particularly in a multicultural region which is indicated by a reasonable number of learners. For instance, in some schools English learners may be from backgrounds of significantly rich socio-economic calibers. On the other hand, local English speakers in urban areas have poor socio-economic status. Reasonable analysis of factors mentioned above would assist in evaluation study move above the general overview concerning the programs efficiency, making accurate analysis regarding literacy intervention for different student groups . Unfortunately, these differences are hard to sustain and manage.

Research Ethics

Some schools might be having existing doubts in some about carefully sticking to such rules on English learners. Such schools are therefore not supported by the data. Tutoring in Reading Recovery includes a defined setup, apart from the classroom. It supports language as well as literacy teaching for learners who are not fluent in English.

The database where we drew information enabled us to follow different features of the implementation and efficiency of Reading Recovery .If such a database is not in place and there is no capacity of an external body to do an analysis of such data (in this case, New York University), it would be impossible to identify bias in service delivery to English learners.

This addresses the value of partnerships between schools and universities in order to evaluate the program.

Action

The program changes that I have come across during my study are easily implementable through introduction and coordination of phonemic awareness curriculum into the syllabus. It will help foundation learners to incorporate sound learning and improve their performance and also the required benchmark.

Timeline

Implementation of phonemic awareness program depends on the willingness of the government to take up the matter into their hand because my study has proven that it’s an important aspect of research, especially to foundation learners. The program is executable at any given timeline if decisions can be made wisely by the government and necessary resources provided to execute the program.

References

Ashdown, Jane and Simic, Ognjen (2000). Is Early Literacy Intervention Effective for English Language Learners?

Bianco, Joseph Lo and Scrull, Janet (2005). Successful Engagement in Early Literacy Learning: Implications, Practices and Insights. Catholic Education Office and The University of Melbourne.

Chabot, Jeanette M (2010). Phonological Awareness Interventions for Students At-Risk Of Reading Failure. Concordia University, Portland.

Cochrane, Kirsty (2009). Teaching Reading –An Action Research Model. Practically Primary Vol. 14 No. 3

Davidson, Chris (1979). The Development of Associations for Remedial Teachers in Australia. Learning Difficulties Australia Bulletin. Volume 47, No 2, Winter Evidence from Reading Recovery. Literacy Teaching and Learning. Vol.5, No. 1

Hamilton, Gwendolyn Elizabeth (2007). The Effectiveness of Phonological Awareness Instruction in Improving Reading Scores. The College at Brockport: State University of New York

Hempenstall, Kerry (2015). Phonemic awareness: Yea, nay? (Part 2). Learning Difficulties Australia Bulletin. Volume 47, No 2, Winter

Iversen, S., & Tunmer, W. E. (1993). Phonological Processing Skills and the Reading Recovery Program. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85(1), 112–126

North American Trainers Group (2002). What Evidence Says About Reading Recovery.Reading Recovery® Council of North America, Inc.

Ng, Ivy (2006). A New Experience Teaching Phonemic Awareness -A Teacher Action Research.

Profile Id (n.d). Australia: Language spoken at home. Web. Retrieved from: http://profile.id.com.au/australia/language

Quay, L. C., Steele, D. C., Johnson, C. I., & Hortman, W. (2001). Children’s Achievement and Personal and Social Development in a First-Year Reading Recovery Program with Teachers-In-Training. Literacy Teaching and Learning: An International Journal of Early Reading and Writing, 5, 7–25.

Saskatchewan Learning (2004). Teaching Students with Reading Difficulties and Disabilities A Guide for Educators. Web. Retrieved at: http://www.education.gov.sk.ca/reading-difficulties-disabilities

State Government Victoria (2007). Reading Recovery Guidelines. Department of Education in Early Childhood Development.

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