Reading is the most important skill that a student should master as it is the key with which they understand new information and is the key to formal education. Reading is fundamentally the basis of all other learning because education and instruction makes use of written materials (Adams, 1990). Mastery of reading skills is desired by all teachers and the complex and difficult process by which reading is learned has been the subject of various researches. However, education is more concerned with how to effectively teach reading skills and to make sure that students attain a certain level of mastery and competency.
Reading instruction is composed of phonetic and phonemic knowledge and the ability to recognize letters, words and pronounce the words in the proper way as well as to understand the meaning of individual words and then stories (Cunningham, 1990). Both comprehension and vocabulary is the core of reading skills, comprehension is the ability to understand the meaning of paragraphs and stories. Comprehension and vocabulary is necessary for critical thinking and analysis as the ability to understand words lead to critical investigation and analytical examination of the written story.
Reading achievement is measured by reading tests that are usually standardized; moreover, the state has a prescribed standard appropriate for the grade levels of students that they must be able to reach at the end of the school year. Students who do not reach the said standards are said to be deficient in reading skills. Most students who have failed to accomplish state standards in major subjects like Science, Math and Language are categorized as underperforming or academically challenged (Phillips, Norris & Mason, 1996).
It is logical to say that increasing the reading achievement of students would also lead to an increase in academic performance as a whole, thus it is important to find ways to increase reading achievement. Several strategies have been designed to increase the reading achievement of students however, the basic principle that has been found to contribute to the learning of reading is when there is a supportive learning environment that scaffolds and encourages them to learn to read (Fielding-Barnsley, 1997).
The Failure Free Reading approach refers to the process wherein students are assisted in developing reading skills and which is not graded thereby failure is not a part of the program. Moreover, students will be allowed to progress on their own pace in the series of reading activities designed to develop reading skills and other competencies required in mastery of reading skills (Ross, Smith, Casey, & Slavin, 1995). It is hypothesized that with this Failure Free Reading program the students would be able to increase their reading achievement scores after a certain period of time.
This study would therefore attempt to determine whether failure free reading program would increase the reading achievement of struggling grade two students. This study would be comparative and quantitative in design, since students performance would be tracked and compared before and after the intervention is given. Research Question 1. To determine the effect of Failure Free Reading to the reading achievement of struggling Grade 2 students.
to determine the relationship between academic grades and reading achievement scores of struggling Grade 2 students. Hypothesis a. The Failure Free Reading program will increase the reading achievement of struggling Grade 2 students. b. The Failure Free Reading program will not increase the reading achievement of struggling Grade 2 students. c. There is a positive relationship between academic grades and reading achievement scores of struggling grade 2 students.
There is no association between academic grades and reading achievement scores ofg struggling Grade 2 students. Design This study will be a quantitative quasi-experimental design, the students will be pretested to determine their reading achievement, an intervention program will then be given to the participants for two months (you can change this), after which a post test will again be administered to determine the reading achievement score after the intervention program.
The scores from the pretest and posttest reading achievement score will then be compared to determine if there has been any improvement in the reading achievement scores. Another variable that could be considered in this study would be the reading academic grades of the students before and after the intervention program was given in order to determine whether an increase in the grades will be caused by the intervention program. A standardized reading test appropriate for the student’s age and grade level will be administered to identify the baseline data of the participants.
Then the failure free reading program (Wasik & Slavin, 1993) will be implemented wherein the identified struggling grade 2 students will be asked to attend the intervention program. After a quarter of failure free reading instruction the students will be tested again to measure their reading achievement scores and will then be compared to the baseline data using statistical tools to determine whether there was any increase or improvement in the reading achievement scores.
Sampling Procedure Participants of the study will be struggling grade 2 students in a local public school, the participants will be selected based on their overall academic performance for the previous quarter. These can be identified by examining the academic grades or performance of the students and will be corroborated by the personal observations and recommendations of the teacher. The proposed school wherein the participants will be recruited has more than one grade two class; therefore participants will have to come from all the grade two classes who fulfill the inclusion criteria.
The participants will be sampled using captive and criterion based sampling methods, captive in the sense that these students are already held captive in the school setting while a child can only be chosen if he/she fulfills the criteria identified in this proposal. Consent from the students and their parents will have to be sought before conducting the study and before asking them to take the pretest. Consent will be asked through a letter informing the parents of the objectives of the research study and the details of the participation of the students.
Voluntary and informed consent will be gathered through a form or a reply slip from the parents. Data Analysis This quantitative study will be analyzed through the use of statistical tests. The pre and post test scores will be run through SPSS using the t-test in order to determine any significant increase or decrease in the before and after the intervention program. The SPSS will also analyze demographic data through descriptive statistics wherein the age, gender and ethnicity of the participants will also be described and analysis will be done in relation to the reading achievement scores for each category.
Then, the reading academic grades of the participants will also be analyzed using the t-test which is to compare the before and after the intervention program grades so as to determine whether the program was able to influence the academic grades of the participants. Lastly, the academic grades and the reading achievement scores will be correlated using the Pearson moment correlation formula to determine whether academic grades are related to reading achievement scores.
References
Adams, M. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking & learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Cunningham, A. (1990) Explicit instruction in phonemic awareness. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 50 429–444. Fielding-Barnsley, R. (1997). Explicit instruction in decoding benefits children high in phonemic awareness & alphabet knowledge. Scientific Studies of Reading, 1, 85–98. Phillips, L. , Norris, S. & Mason, J. (1996). Longitudinal effects of early literacy concepts on reading achievement: A kindergarten intervention & five-year follow-up. Journal of Literacy Research, 28, 173–195.