Improving Expository Text Comprehension in Adolescent Spanish-English Bilingual Learners with Learning Disabilities using a Graphic Organizer

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Description
The purpose of this single case design study was to examine the efficacy of a graphic organizer for improving the reading comprehension of middle school Spanish-English bilingual middle school students with learning disabilities. Students included two females and one male…

The purpose of this single case design study was to examine the efficacy of a graphic organizer for improving the reading comprehension of middle school Spanish-English bilingual middle school students with learning disabilities. Students included two females and one male student. Using a multiple baseline across participants design, students were taught to create a funnel map graphic organizer for 10 descriptive text passages. Students’ performance was assessed on their ability to correctly create the funnel map (criterion variable) and to comprehend the expository passages during baseline, intervention, and maintenance phases. Each participant learned to create an accurate funnel map for descriptive texts within four sessions. Reading comprehension scores began to increase within three intervention sessions for each participant. Results showed the positive effect of using the funnel map to improve reading comprehension of descriptive texts. Individual TAU effect sizes (.81 to .92) and overall TAU-U effect sizes (.86) and a Between Cases Standardized Mean Difference (BC-SMD) of 1.87 showed the intervention to be highly effective. Based on the effect sizes, the funnel map was effective for improving the reading comprehension of middle school Spanish-English bilingual students with learning disabilities.
Date Created
2022
Agent

Victoria Morgan - Barrett Honors Creative Project

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Description

Working alongside book author Emilia Banuelos, I illustrated her children's book titled "El Papalote Perdido." Through a series of watercolor images, I depicted the story of a Mexican-American girl named Lucía and her lost kite, wandering through the Sonoran Desert…

Working alongside book author Emilia Banuelos, I illustrated her children's book titled "El Papalote Perdido." Through a series of watercolor images, I depicted the story of a Mexican-American girl named Lucía and her lost kite, wandering through the Sonoran Desert in the Southwestern US. From rattlesnakes to tarantulas, saguaros to agaves, I painted all of the details that made this story so unique. Together, Emilia and I created a complete children's book that we plan to share with children throughout the valley by providing the book to local libraries and elementary schools.

Date Created
2022-05
Agent

Morgan Final Project (Spring 2022)

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Description

Working alongside book author Emilia Banuelos, I illustrated her children's book titled "El Papalote Perdido." Through a series of watercolor images, I depicted the story of a Mexican-American girl named Lucía and her lost kite, wandering through the Sonoran Desert…

Working alongside book author Emilia Banuelos, I illustrated her children's book titled "El Papalote Perdido." Through a series of watercolor images, I depicted the story of a Mexican-American girl named Lucía and her lost kite, wandering through the Sonoran Desert in the Southwestern US. From rattlesnakes to tarantulas, saguaros to agaves, I painted all of the details that made this story so unique. Together, Emilia and I created a complete children's book that we plan to share with children throughout the valley by providing the book to local libraries and elementary schools.

Date Created
2022-05
Agent

Illustrations for "El Papalote Perdido"

Description
Working alongside book author Emilia Banuelos, I illustrated her children's book titled "El Papalote Perdido." Through a series of watercolor images, I depicted the story of a Mexican-American girl named Lucía and her lost kite, wandering through the Sonoran Desert…

Working alongside book author Emilia Banuelos, I illustrated her children's book titled "El Papalote Perdido." Through a series of watercolor images, I depicted the story of a Mexican-American girl named Lucía and her lost kite, wandering through the Sonoran Desert in the Southwestern US. From rattlesnakes to tarantulas, saguaros to agaves, I painted all of the details that made this story so unique. Together, Emilia and I created a complete children's book that we plan to share with children throughout the valley by providing the book to local libraries and elementary schools.
Date Created
2022-05
Agent

The Readability of the Dyslexia Screening Questionnaire

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Description

Early identification of dyslexia is essential to providing children with the necessary services and support to succeed academically. Current dyslexia screening measures are not widely available for English-speaking monolingual children and those available for bilingual children are not widely used.…

Early identification of dyslexia is essential to providing children with the necessary services and support to succeed academically. Current dyslexia screening measures are not widely available for English-speaking monolingual children and those available for bilingual children are not widely used. To contribute to the effort to provide widely available screening for six-year-old English speaking and bilingual children, the ASU Bilingual Language and Literacy Lab, the Child Language and Literacy Lab, Learning to Soar Tutoring, Healing Hearts Pediatrics, and the Phoenix Children’s hospital have collaborated to develop the Dyslexia Screening Questionnaire (DysQ) that is offered in both English and Spanish. The goal of this study (Phase I) was to test the readability and comprehensibility of the DySQ to help ensure that it is accessible to a wide population of English and Spanish-speaking parents. In the second phase of the study, we aim to validate the DySQ by comparing the DySQ results with gold-standard testing for diagnosing dyslexia. The ultimate goal is to implement the DySQ into pediatric settings so that English and Spanish-speaking children may be screened for dyslexia at their 6-year-old well-child check-up.

Date Created
2021-12
Agent

Word Learning Development in Elementary Aged Children

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Description
The purpose of this study was to investigate differences in word learning ability when assessing phonological and semantic representations in elementary-age children with typical development. Methods: The study included 116 2nd graders and 25 6th graders who were tested using…

The purpose of this study was to investigate differences in word learning ability when assessing phonological and semantic representations in elementary-age children with typical development. Methods: The study included 116 2nd graders and 25 6th graders who were tested using the Assessment Battery for Children - Word Learning. Children played virtual pirate games that tested their ability to store, retrieve, and recall phonological and semantic representations of nonwords. Results: Based on effect sizes, the largest differences in word learning ability occurred for tasks requiring phonological working memory. Overall, 6th graders had higher performance means in all aspects of word learning. Both groups performed better on tasks that required less phonological or semantic detail. Discussion: Findings align with previous research reporting that as children develop, their capacity to store, retrieve, and recall phonological information increases as a result of increased phonological loop capacity and rehearsal speed. Similarly, as children age they perform better on tasks requiring visuospatial working memory such as storing and recreating the semantic representations of new words. These findings have implications for the word learning process in children with typical development.
Date Created
2018-12
Agent

The role of text difficulty in small-group reading for bilingual students

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Description
How hard should the books be in elementary small-group reading? This study explored text difficulty for bilingual students reading below grade level in third grade. Using a convergent parallel mixed methods design, I used qualitative methods to analyze students’ engagement…

How hard should the books be in elementary small-group reading? This study explored text difficulty for bilingual students reading below grade level in third grade. Using a convergent parallel mixed methods design, I used qualitative methods to analyze students’ engagement and discussion during small groups and single case design to evaluate students’ fluency and reading comprehension after reading and discussing texts in small groups.

Six Spanish-English bilingual students, split into two groups of three, participated in twelve, 30-minute, small-group reading sessions. Students in Group 1 read approximately one year below grade level, and students in Group 2 read approximately a year and a half below grade level. In six of the twelve sessions, students read and discussed texts matched to their reading levels, and in the other six they read and discussed texts one year ahead of their reading levels. I assigned matched and difficult texts across the twelve days by blocked randomization.

I analyzed video transcripts of each session to understand students’ engagement (focus of engagement, strategies, and interaction) and discussion (inferential vs. literal responses, instances of verbal participation). At the end of each session, students reread and retold the book the group had read and discussed that day to produce a fluency (words correct per minute) and comprehension (ideas correctly retold) score.

Findings were complex and revealed that different levels of texts have both advantages and drawbacks. Key findings included: For fluency, half of the students benefited from matched texts. The other half read difficult texts with similar fluency to matched texts. For comprehension, text difficulty did not matter for anyone except one student, and for him it only had an effect on 3 of 12 days. Group 2 engaged much more with texts and ideas in difficult books and with pictures in matched books. Group 1 had more inferential/interpretive responses with matched texts, and Group 2 had more inferential and interpretive responses with difficult texts. Most students participated evenly regardless of the difficulty of the text under discussion. However, two students talked more when discussing matched texts.
Date Created
2018
Agent

Learning to Listen: Changes in Brain Activity following a Listening Comprehension Intervention

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Description
Language comprehension is an essential skill in many aspects of life, yet some children still struggle with oral comprehension. This study examined the effectiveness of an intervention to improve the listening skills and comprehension of 4 and 5-year olds. This…

Language comprehension is an essential skill in many aspects of life, yet some children still struggle with oral comprehension. This study examined the effectiveness of an intervention to improve the listening skills and comprehension of 4 and 5-year olds. This intervention is based on principles of embodied cognition, namely that language comprehension requires a simulation (or imagination) of what the language is about. Thus, children in the intervention condition moved pictures on an iPad to simulate the stories they were hearing. Children in the control condition saw the pictures, but did not move them. To identify the effectiveness of this simulation training, we analyzed scores on a comprehension test, and changes in motor cortex activity while listening. If the intervention increases simulation, then compared to the control, a) children given the intervention should perform better on the comprehension test, and b) those children should show greater activity in their motor cortices while listening. Furthermore, the change in motor cortex activity should statistically mediate the change in comprehension. Our results showed a significant positive correlation (.79) in the EMBRACE group (but not in the control) between the change in mu suppression before and after the intervention and the change in comprehension questions before and after the intervention. This correlation suggests that children can be taught to use their motor cortices while listening, and supports our hypothesis that embodied language theories, such as simulation are useful for enhancing comprehension.
Date Created
2016-12
Agent

Response to a Dual Language Narrative Intervention on Story Retelling in English Language Learners

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Description
This study evaluated whether the Story Champs intervention is effective in bilingual kindergarten children who speak Spanish as their native language. Previous research by Spencer and Slocum (2010) found that monolingual, English-speaking participants made significant gains in narrative retelling after…

This study evaluated whether the Story Champs intervention is effective in bilingual kindergarten children who speak Spanish as their native language. Previous research by Spencer and Slocum (2010) found that monolingual, English-speaking participants made significant gains in narrative retelling after intervention. This study implemented the intervention in two languages and examined its effects after ten sessions. Results indicate that some children benefited from the intervention and there was variability across languages as well.
Date Created
2014-05
Agent

Dynamics of Community and Literacy Among Latino Families

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Description
The Latino population is the fastest growing minority group in the United States (U.S Census Bureau, 2003). Such a rapidly changing demographic stresses the importance of implementing strategies into the community social framework to accommodate for cultural and language differences.…

The Latino population is the fastest growing minority group in the United States (U.S Census Bureau, 2003). Such a rapidly changing demographic stresses the importance of implementing strategies into the community social framework to accommodate for cultural and language differences. This research paper seeks to answer: what factors influence the sense of community among Latino families in Phoenix? The following questions will help to assess the dynamic relationship between sense of community and literacy 1) what is the perceived importance of literacy among Latino families living in Phoenix? 2) How is language development reflected among the family dynamics within a predominantly collectivist culture? It is hypothesized that both collectivism and literacy are the main influences on sense of community among this population.
Date Created
2015-05
Agent
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