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Running head: READ NATURALLY PILOT STUDY

The Impact of the Read Naturally Reading Program on Post-Secondary Students with Intellectual

Disabilities: A Pilot Study

Anna Menditto

George Mason University

READ NATURALLY READING PROGRAM PILOT STUDY

Abstract

Four post-secondary students with intellectual disabilities received explicit reading instruction

using the Read Naturally Reading Program in a small group setting. The Read Naturally Reading

Program consists of 11 steps for reading instruction. While all 11 steps were followed including

predicting the main idea, key word review, reading comprehension questions, and summarizing

the passage the primary focus of this pilot study was fluency improvement during the treatment

phase. Four students met the inclusion criteria and received sixteen sessions (approximately 30

minutes per session) of intervention instruction across baseline and treatment. Implications for

practice are discussed.


The Impact of the Read Naturally Reading Program on Post-Secondary Students with

Intellectual Disabilities: A Pilot Study

Increasing numbers of students with disabilities are looking to postsecondary education

to help them achieve success in academics and careers. Upon exiting the public school system,

most students with intellectual or developmental disabilities often earn certificates or alternative

diplomas and transition to community employment programs or adult day programs.

Postsecondary programs are defined in the literature as a program providing education or

vocational training to individuals with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (Neubert et

al., 2001). Although less evident than the needed support at the post secondary level for students

with learning disabilities, students with intellectual and development disabilities also need to be

provided with the opportunity to participate in classes and activities on post-secondary

campuses. Existing programs often focus on independent living, functional, and social/personal

skills (Neubert, Moon, Grigal, & Redd, 2001). In addition, to developing independence,

attending a post-secondary education program may enhance employment opportunities, improve

financial security, and increase self-esteem (Kleinert, Jones, Sheppard-Jones, Harp, & Harrison,

2012). From 1990-2005, there was a 19.3% increase in students with disabilities who received a

post-secondary education (Wagner, Newman, Cameto, & Levine, 2005). For this group of

learners, individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID), reading is the primary area of reading

difficulty. Although reading interventions for individuals with ID is limited, much is known

about reading instruction for students with mild disabilities (Hua, Woods-Groves, & Ford, 2014).

For instance, research has shown that struggling readers tend to approach reading passively in

that they are less likely to construct any meaning from the text they read (Hua et al., 2014).


Although there is a growing body of research in reading strategy instruction for

secondary education, which has identified successful methods encouraging metacognitive

awareness, what seems to be lacking in the research, is the connection between these findings

and post-secondary education reading instruction (Eckert, 2008). As students progress through

primary and secondary grades, it’s important to note the time to devote to strategy instruction

gets pushed to the side as the content gets increasingly difficult. However, if a student doesn’t

understand what strategy to use or even what a strategy is, the content instruction becomes

questionable.

Research Purpose/Questions

The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the feasibility, practicality, and

effectiveness of the Read Naturally Intervention for Post-Secondary students with intellectual

and developmental disabilities. This study investigated the use of the Read Naturally Reading

Program. The Read Naturally Reading Program combines teacher modeling, repeated reading,

and progress monitoring to create a powerful tool to individualize instruction and improve

reading fluency for struggling readers. It addresses the following research questions:

1. Are there differences between post-secondary students’ fluency rate when using a

computerized reading program?

2. What were the students’ perceptions of the Read Naturally Reading Program?

A multiple baseline single-subject research design was used and replicated across four students.

Method

Setting

This program at a large mid-Atlantic University supports academic and university

experiences for students with disabilities and offers a four-year curriculum. This program at a


large mid-Atlantic University supports academic and university experiences for students with

disabilities and offers a four-year curriculum. Students in a post-secondary program for students

with intellectual and developmental disabilities were selected to participate in this pilot study as

part of their regularly scheduled reading instruction.

Participants

Participant A. Student A is a nineteen-year-old male. Student A was diagnosed with

Autism at an early age and has significant developmental delays and documented anxiety.

During our sessions, participant A used a strategy to pause and stretch to collect his thoughts.

Since the Read Naturally Reading Program relies on timed fluency passages, this interfered at

times with how many words per minute he would read. Student A was always excited and

willing to work throughout all the sessions.

Participant B. Student B is a twenty two-year-old male. Student B has Down syndrome

and is grouped in the medium to low reading group. Student B was very determined to complete

all the components of the Read Naturally Program. Student B worked through the program

quietly without needing any prompting to go to the next section.

Participant C. Student C is a twenty-one-year-old male. Student Q has Autism, an

intellectual disability, and an anxiety disorder. Student C had used the Read Naturally Reading

Program before and shared this during one of the session. For this student, he was originally in

the second group that received the treatment; however, he read at a much higher level than the

other three students and needed to be switched to the earlier group in order to finish within the

period.

Participant D. Student D is a twenty-six-year-old female. Student D has a mitochondrial

disorder accompanied with a speech disorder. Student D is a very shy and quiet student, which


provided the recording of her reading to be very difficult at times as she is so soft spoken. It took

several sessions for Student D to warm up to the researcher, but once she did, she was very

cooperative and showed excitement upon walking into the sessions.

Research Design

This pilot study employed a multiple-baseline design. Taking a multiple-baseline

approach (Kratochwill & Levin, 2014), allows for a systematic approach version of the

replicated AB design. This research design allowed for replication across participants while

maintaining a systematic staggered intervention introduction.

Dependent Variables

Fuchs, Fuchs, Hosp and Jenkins (2001) define oral reading fluency as the oral translation

of text with speed and accuracy. Oral reading fluency represents a complicated, multifaceted

performance that involves a reader's perceptual skills at automatically translating letters into

coherent sound representations, relating text meaning to prior information, and making

inferences to supply missing information. Fluency is the ability to read as well as we speak and

to make sense of the text without having to stop and decode each word. The National Reading

Panel’s research findings concluded that guided, repeated oral reading significantly improves

word recognition, reading fluency, and comprehension in students of all ages.

Independent Variable

The intervention for this pilot was the Read Naturally Reading Program to improve

fluency for post-secondary students with intellectual and developmental disabilities. During

treatment, the following 11 steps will be implemented using the Read Naturally computer

software program: (1) select a story: the instructor will select a story from the appropriate

fluency level for that student; (2) key words: with audio support, the student learns a few


vocabulary words that are key to understanding the story; (3) prediction: the student uses the

story titles, illustration, and key words to write a prediction about the story; (4) cold timing: the

student is timed for one minute and records the words-correct-per-minute score; (5) graph cold-

timing score: The student graphs the number of words read correctly in blue on the Fluency

Graph; (6) read along: The student reads along quietly with an audio recording of the story

(teacher modeling) until he or she is able to read the story without errors. Usually a student reads

along three times, but this varies depending on the age and ability of the student; (7) practice:

The student reads the story quietly multiple times (repeated reading), timing himself or herself to

check progress. The student continues to read the story until he or she can reach an individual

goal, which is a predetermined number of words read correctly per minute; (8) answer the

questions: The student answers comprehension questions about the story; (9) pass: The teacher

does a hot timing. The teacher listens to the student read the story and determines whether or not

the student passes the story and is ready to work on a new story. The student passes the goal

when they have read the story with three or less errors; (10) graph hot-timing score: If the

student passes, the hot-timing score is graphed in red on the fluency graph. The student graphs

the hot-timing score above the cold timing score, which provides visual feedback on how much

improvement the student made by working on the story; and (11) retell the story: the student

retells or summarizes the story, reinforcing comprehension.

Materials

Baseline materials. During baseline sessions, students’ read fluency passages saved as a

PDF from the Read Naturally Program. Students completed a 1 minute cold read, spent 3

minutes re-reading the passage independently, followed by a 1 minute warm read. Each cold and


warm read was audio recorded for reliability purposes. Words read per minute were recorded for

each read on the corresponding fluency passage by the researcher.

Treatment materials. During treatment sessions, students used laptop provided by the

college, which had, the Read Naturally Reading Program downloaded for each session. Each

student had his or her own individual log in to track progress using the software. At the

beginning of each session, each student would come into the computer lab, sit down at his or her

computer, and begin working in the Read Naturally Program. The first step

Data Collection Procedures

Baseline procedures. Prior to baseline, students were given a placement fluency passage

to determine the appropriate level to start them on. During baseline, students read a fluency

passage from the level of Read Naturally they placed. The fluency passages were saved as a PDF

and uploaded to the assigned computer for the student to read. The student read the story, cold,

for 1 minute. Errors were counted and subtracted from the total words read for a cold score. The

student then spent 3 minutes rereading the passage on his or her own without any instructor

feedback. Following the three minutes, the students read the passage again for 1 minute. Errors

were counted and subtracted from the total words read for a warm score.

Treatment procedures. Once students’ permissions and permission from the program

director were obtained, participants were asked to engage in a computerized reading program for

approximately 25 minutes three times per week. The majority of the sessions took 25 minutes

with three students (Students A, B, and D) and with one student (Student C) requiring 30-35

minutes per session to complete the program. Prior to the treatment phase, students received

explicit instructions on how to use the Read Naturally Program from the instructor. During

treatment phase, eleven steps were followed. The eleven steps included: (1) selecting a story, (2)


reviewing key words, (3) prediction, (4) cold timing, (5) graphing cold timing, (6) read along, (7)

practice, (8) answer the questions, (9) pass, (10) graph hot-timing score, and (11) retell the story.

Out of the eleven steps, the research was present to observe and record data for steps (4) cold

timing, (5) graphing cold timing, (7) practice, (9) pass, and (10 graphing hot-timing score.

Maintenance or generalization procedures. Due to scheduling conflicts, only two

students were able to complete a maintenance measure, which was completed one week post

final data collection point.

Interobserver Agreement

Prior to publication, (a) observers will be training on how to score the recorded Read

Naturally Reading Passages by the research; (b) the observer will be a fellow doctorate student;

(c) the observers will listen to 33% of the recorded fluency passages her each of the four

participants; (d) the formula which will be used will be total agreement = smaller total/larger

total x 100%; and (e) the anticipated IOA coefficient will be 80$ or higher.

Procedural Reliability

A Fidelity of Treatment checklist was provided with the Read Naturally Program to

ensure the same implementation across the four participants. The checklist was divided into three

parts: planning and setting up, Implementing the steps, and student behavior.

Social Validity

Following the interventions, each individual student was asked five social validity

questions. The purpose of the social validity is to determine of the goals, procedure, and

practicality of the intervention are socially valid. In an open ended format, students were asked

(1) What did they like about the Read Naturally Program? And (2) What did you not like about

the Read Naturally Program? Students were asked three questions on a four item Likert Scale


with the answer choices being (1) strong disagree, (2) disagree, (3) Agree, and (4) Strongly

Agree. The four statements were: (1) The passages were interesting; (2) I enjoyed working on the

computer; and (3) I would use the Read Naturally Program Again.

Data Analysis

Visual analysis. According the Kratochwill & Levin, 2014, the four steps in Visual

Analysis that need to be addressed are: (1) Baseline, (2) Documentation of a predictable

problem, (3) Basic effects, and (4) Experimental Control. The six features used to assess basic

effects were level, trend, variability, overlap, immediacy, and consistency. Within each phase,

the researcher analyzed the mean of the data within the phase, the slope of the best-fit line, and

deviation around the best-fit line. Between phases, these three were analyzed in addition to

percentage of data from intervention phase that overlaps with baseline data, magnitude of

change, and similar data patterns in phases.

Results

Visual analysis.

Over all, the four participants were consistent across baseline and treatment phases for

words read per minute using the Read Naturally Reading Program. For Participant A, the PND

was 92%, which is high. The graphs show a upward positive trend with medium magnitude.

There was low variability within the phases. For Participant B, the PND was only 16%, which is

extremely low. The graph shows no immediacy of effect, low variability, and a flat slope. For

Participant C, the PND was 0%, which is extremely low. The graph shows no immediacy of

effect, low variability, and a slightly downward slope as the treatment phase continued. Finally,

for Participant D, the PND was 40%, which is moderate. The graph shows no immediacy of


effect, low variability, and a slight positive upward slope as the treatment phases continued. For

an overall PND of 37%. See Figure 1 below for individual student graphs.

Qualitative analysis. The responses on the Social Validity Measure varied across

participants. Examples of what they liked about the Read Naturally Program included the

different stories, the program helps when you don’t understand a word, using the head phones,

listening to the program read out loud to you, and that it gave challenging words. Three students

didn’t have anything negative to report; however, one student commented how long it took. All

four students agreed or strongly agreed that the passages were interesting. All four students

agreed or strongly agreed that they enjoyed working on the computer. All four students answered

differently when asked if they would use the Read Naturally Program again. Three students

agreed or strongly agreed; however, one said they disagreed because they already knew how to

read.

Discussion

The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the feasibility, practicality, and

effectiveness of the Read Naturally Intervention for Post-Secondary students with intellectual

and developmental disabilities. The Read Naturally Program offered a variety of passages for

students of all reading levels, which is why it was ideal for a post-secondary population. While

this was a pilot, there are several key points to note going forward with this program. First, out of

the original ten students available, only four were there often enough to receive the intervention

on a regular basis. Out of these four, only one (Student A) showed an immediacy of effect during

the treatment phase. Two students, Student A and Student D had moderate to high percentages of

non-overlapping data indicating this intervention was beneficial for their fluency skills.

However, for the other two, it didn’t matter whether they were reading from a PDF during


baseline or working through the Read Naturally Software during the treatment phase, their

reading fluency scores stayed consistent.

Practical Implications

For a post-secondary setting, the Read Naturally Reading Program has practical

applications for instruction. For instance, the program is designed to let students go at their own

pace to master each fluency passage; however, the downside of this being that students need to

be monitoring when doing their independent readings (cold, practice, and warm) in order for

incorrect words to correctly be selected to achieve an accurate fluency score. As the students

were reading, the four students in this pilot study were unaware of the words they were reading

incorrectly after they had three read aloud to them. As this is key to helping students understand

how to correctly pronounce a word and calling their attention to the words they are not

pronouncing correctly. With that being said, there is a feature built into the software for the

students to take mini-quizzes for vocabulary related to the story while they wait for the instructor

to come over for a timed read. While this is practical to hold the students attention so they aren’t

tempted to drift off elsewhere, such as exploring on an Internet site, it does pose a problem for

the time allotted for the period. The Read Naturally Program recommends a teacher-student ratio

of no more than 1:8; however, for the severity of the needs of the post-secondary population, I

would highly recommend a 1:4 ratio when the program is first being introduced so the proper

monitoring of progress can occur. The time for the students to work through the program should

be a minimum of 30 minutes per session. The proposed timeline was 15 minutes on Read

Naturally and 15 minutes with vocabulary; however, through this pilot, we learned the full 30

minutes needs to be devoted to Read Naturally in order for the students to work through the steps

of the intervention.


Limitations and Future Research

Reading is a very important area to be researched and refined; especially, in a post-

secondary setting. Most students who get past high-school and still struggle with reading aren’t

taught strategies for reading or comprehending; which is unfortunate, since reading is a life long

skill. Future research is needed in this area to determine best practices for reading strategies for

post-secondary students with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Limitations of this

current study included the declining number of participants due to attendance and the lack of

variability within the participant’s performance on the fluency passages. Next steps to improve

this study include monitoring those students who were in attendance once, twice, and three times

a week to compare the intensity of the intervention to reading fluency outcomes.

Reflection

This pilot study was eye opening in many ways. As a previous tutor, I thoroughly enjoyed the

one-on-one components of the Read Naturally Reading Program. The steam lining of the

computer software made it easier accessible once we had internet access in the lab. We learned

throughout the semester to get there 40 minutes early in order for all the computers to turn on.

This will be something to note as we move forward with further implementation of the Read

Naturally Program. I see the value of using single-subject designs; especially when working with

the post-secondary population of students. Each student has their own individual characteristics

that effect their performance on any academic task and should be noted along with any

characteristics of the student. The amount of detail needed to document and carry out a single-

subject study really shocked me. Prior to taking the class, I had read single-subject studies and

had an over view but now I have a deep understanding of what is needed for each design to meet

the standards set.


References

Eckert, L. S. (2008). Bridging the pedagogical gap: Intersections between literary and reading

theories in secondary and post secondary literacy instruction. Journal of Adolescent and

Adult Literacy, 52, 110-118.

Hua, Y., Woods-Groves, S., Ford, J. W., & Nobles, K. A. (2014). Effects of the paraphrasing

strategy on expository reading of young adults with intellectual disability. Education and

Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities, 49, 429-439.

Kleinert, H. L., Jones, M. M., Sheppard-Jones, K., Harp, B., & Harrison, E. M. (2012). Students

with intellectual disabilities going to college? Absolutely! Teaching Exceptional

Children, 44, 26-35.

Kratochwill, T. R., & Levin, J. R. (Eds.). (2014). Single-case intervention research:

Methodological and statistical advances. Washington DC: American Psychological

Association.

Wagner, M., Newman, L., Cameto, R., & Levine, P. (2005). Changes over time in the early

postsecondary outcomes of youth with disabilities: A report of findings from the National

Longitudinal Transition Study (NLTS) and National Longitudinal Study-2 (NLTS2).

Menlo, CA: SRI International.


Table 1

Student Demographics

Participants Gender Age Ethnicity Primary Disability IQStudent AStudent BStudent CStudent D

MMMF

19222126

AsianAfrican AmericanAfrican American

Caucasian

Developmental Down Syndrome

ID, AutismSpeech Disorder

67n/an/an/a


Figure 1. Words Per Minute for Read Naturally Program

Number of Read Naturally Sessions

Student D

Student C

Student B

Student A

Documents

annamendittoportfolio.weebly.com · Web viewFrom 1990-2005, there was a 19.3% increase in students with disabilities who received a post-secondary education (Wagner, Newman, Cameto,