Generating Vocabulary Knowledge for At-Risk Middle School Readers: Contrasting Program Effects and Growth Trajectories

Abstract

We tested whether urban middle-school students from mostly low-income homes had improved academic vocabulary when they participated in a freely available vocabulary program, Word Generation (WG). To understand how this program may support students at risk for long-term reading difficulty, we examined treatment interactions with baseline achievement on a state standardized test and also differential effects for students with (n D 398) and without (n D 1,395) individualized education plans (IEPs). Students in this unmatched quasi-experiment (5 WG and 4 comparison schools) completed pre-and postvocabulary assessments during the intervention year. We also retested student vocabulary knowledge after summer vacation and the following spring on 11 target words to construct a longitudinally consistent scaled score across 4 waves of data. Growth models show that students experienced summer setback. Although there were no average underlying differences in growth or differences in summer setback for students by baseline achievement, better readers improved more from program participation. IEP status did not predict differential benefits of program participation, and students with IEPs maintained gains associated with participation in WG; however, participation in the program did not change underlying growth trajectories favoring students who did not have IEPs.

Predictors of Language Gains Among School-Age Children With Language Impairment in the Public Schools

“…Put simply, children who had relatively high levels of oral-language skill, on the basis of their proficiency on phonological awareness and vocabulary assessments implemented in fall of the year, made the greatest gains over the academic year. This finding, although not entirely unexpected because of some prior evidence involving typically developing children receiving language-focused interventions (Justice, Meier, & Walpole, 2005;Lawrence, Givens, Branum-Martin, White, & Snow, 2014;Penno et al, 2002), suggests that a Matthew effect may characterize the language development of children with LI.…”

Common Themes in Teaching Reading for Understanding: Lessons From Three Projects

“…READI studies of literary and history reading in urban schools indicate the promise of the READI approach for improving disciplinary reading and reasoning across a range of student achievement levels (C. Shanahan et al., ; Sosa, Hall, Goldman, & Lee, ). All three approaches have been successfully implemented with English learners (Goldman, Yukhymenko, et al., ; Lawrence, Rolland, Branum‐Martin, & Snow ; Vaughn et al., ).…”

The Inefficiency of Vocabulary Instruction

“…Carlo, August, McLaughlin, Snow, Dressler, Lippman, Lively, and White (2004), for example, argued that "gaining access to the information taught in middle and secondary content area classes requires all students exit elementary school with good reading comprehension," and therefore "closing this gap has a high priority if the U.S. education system is to fulfill its goad of reducing inequalities" (p. 188, 190, emphasis added). Lawrence, Rolland, Branum-Martin, and Snow (2014) claimed that "without proper intervention, lower-skilled students are likely to fall further behind their more skilled peers in academic domains" (p. 77, emphasis added). Faw and Waller (1976) noted that despite the presumed goal of efficiency, most educational intervention studies lack any study or instructional time variable in their analyses.…”