Read Naturally Case Studies
Case 2: Special Education Students, Huron County, Mich.
Students’ assessments in Huron County, Mich., showed a substantial discrepancy in oral reading fluency between general education students and special education students (see Figure 4). To try to narrow this gap, the Huron Intermediate School District, implemented the Read Naturally program targeted at special education students.
School psychologists Gloria Johnson and Jim Weaver collected and analyzed data to compare the test results of special education students who received Read Naturally instruction with the test results of special education students without Read Naturally instruction and with general education students.
As indicated by the slope of the Read Naturally graph lines (in blue)
in the chart below and the data in the table that follows, the
special education students who received Read Naturally instruction had greater gains in fluency than
the special education students without Read Naturally instruction.
Comparison of Grade-Level Reading Performance
Grade
3 |
Grade
4 |
Grade
5 |
Grade
6 |
Grade
7 |
Grade
8 |
|
|
Special Ed. without Read Naturally |
2.61 |
17.62 |
16.69 |
20.12 |
1.79 |
2.11 |
| Special Ed. with Read Naturally | 19.83 |
19.1 |
17.63 |
20.95 |
18.13 |
15.8 |
The school district used reading mazes to evaluate comprehension. In the timed reading maze task, the student is given a grade-level paragraph in which every seventh word is deleted. The student is presented with three choices and is asked to select the best word to fill in the blank, based on the context of the story. The results from the reading mazes indicated that special education students receiving Read Naturally instruction had greater gains in comprehension than the general education students (see table below).
Grade
3 |
Grade
4 |
Grade
5 |
Grade
6 |
Grade
7 |
Grade
8 |
|
|
General Education |
6 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
0 |
2 |
| Special Ed. with Read Naturally | 7.2 |
5.7 |
6.2 |
3.5 |
3.4 |
3.0 |