Fourth- and Fifth-Grade Struggling Readers Show Strong Improvements in Reading Comprehension When Taught the Structure Strategy Using a Web-Based Tutoring System

• In Event: 54.030 - Translating Effective Research on Reading and Writing Into Practice at the Elementary Grades

Abstract

Background
A child who fails to read proficiently at fourth grade will most likely remain a poor reader throughout school with persistent lifelong struggles as he or she faces continuing challenges in comprehending advanced content area texts.
Purpose
The focus of our research was to address the unique demands of the 4th and 5th grade children who are switching from narrative to expository texts, transition from learning to read to reading to learn, and the lack of high quality instruction that can be made universally available through technologies. Our solution was a web-based intelligent tutoring system for the structure strategy (ITSS) that teaches children in grades 4 and 5 how to read and comprehend content area texts using the structure strategy.
The structure strategy is a text structure based instructional approach for improving content area reading comprehension with theoretical and empirical support (Meyer, 1975; Wijekumar et al., 2014).
The purpose of this session will be to present findings from a recent study using the ITSS system with struggling readers in grades 4 and 5. The research questions guiding this study were:
1. Does the individual attention, scaffolding, and feedback provided by ITSS improve reading comprehension of 4th and 5th grade struggling readers on a standardized test and researcher designed measures?
Intervention
ITSS is a web-based tool where each child receives instruction about how to use the text structure strategy to read and comprehend expository texts using five text structures: comparison, problem and solution, cause and effect, sequence, and description. The system provides modeling, practice, assessment, and feedback to the learner.

Research Design:
A randomized controlled trial design was conducted with over 120 classrooms at each grade level (4 and 5) randomly assigned to ITSS or control.
Data Collection and Analysis:
Pre and posttests were administered before and after intervention delivery and multilevel modeling was used to analyze data.
Findings / Results:
A series of hierarchical linear models were specified and analyses were conducted on the differences between the intervention and control classroom children on outcomes of interest. An analysis of fourth and fifth graders in ITSS, who scored less than the 25% percentile on the GSRT pre-test, showed the highest effect sizes on the standardized test scores on the posttests (Wijekumar, Meyer, Lei, 2015). For fourth graders the GRST difference for the ITSS condition versus the control was 1.45 (or .28 SDs, p = .14) after controlling for gender and reading pretest differences. On the comparison structure outcomes at the 4th grade, signaling score difference was 1.83 (or .34 SDs, p < .01), main idea quality difference was .83 (or .55 SDs, p < .001), and comparison competence difference was .55 (or .28 SDs, p < .01) holding reading pretest scores and gender constant.
Conclusions:
The web-based ITSS presents a new approach to helping struggling readers at upper elementary grades. The individualized support provided appears to make a positive impact not only on the reading comprehension but also on reading efficacy.

Author

• Kausalai K. Wijekumar, Texas A&M University - College Station