This paper describes an intervention designed to enhance spelling achievement for learning-disabled (LD) elementary school children. A total of 39 LD children were instructed for 8 sessions over a period of 3 weeks. An experimental group ( n = 24) was taught with lessons that incorporated reduced unit size, distributed practice and review, and training for transfer, and a comparison group ( n = 15) with methods that are typically used in the teaching of spelling. While all children could spell less than 10% of the words on the pretest, the experimental group achieved 80% accuracy on spelling words taught and 75% accuracy on transfer words on a delayed posttest. This was higher than the average posttest performance of the comparison group (60% accuracy on training items and 50% accuracy on transfer items). These findings suggest that LD children can improve their spelling skills if sound remedial principles are applied consistently. The instructional sequence described in this paper can serve both as a model of effective spelling instruction and as a diagnostic, trial-remediation technique for a disabled population.

No abstract

To enhance newfaculty members' chances for teaching andcareer success, Otterbein College piloted a yearlong learning communityprogram and encouraged first-year faculty toparticipate. Four newfaculty members took partin opportunitiesdesigned to enhance their teaching, to orient them more fully toa newinstitutionand studentbody, tofoster collegial community, toencourage reflective practice, and to introduce them to thescholarship of teaching and learning. This qualitative case studytracks their developmental trajectory, which ledthemfrom an initialconcern withselfandsurvival toan eventual focus onstudent learning.

This study examined the relative effectiveness of various word attack strategies for a reading disabled population. Over a 2-day period, children were given lessons that provided direct instruction on a medial vowel sound, practice on monosyllabic words containing the sound, and specific transfer training on nonsense syllables. Word attack strategy was varied for the five treatment groups. Practice consisted of synthesis using initial bigrams and final consonants (co-g), initial consonants and final bigrams (c-og), a combination of initial and final bigram training, or letter-by-letter analysis and synthesis (c-o-g). The initial bigram strategy yielded significantly better performance on transfer words. This finding calls into question popular approaches that emphasize rhyming patterns or letter-by-letter decoding.

No abstract