Date of Award

1986

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Masters of Education

Department

Education

First Advisor

Mary Louise Hawkings

Second Advisor

Rebecca Glenn

Third Advisor

Lisa Lord

Abstract

The project presented herein was designed to measure in a quantitative way the comparative effectiveness of teaching and learning reading and Language skills in groups taught by the basal reading series and by the Success in Reading and Writing.

A discussion of the rather substantially different approaches in these two teaching methods is presented. The basal reading series is a highly structured, specifically ordered teaching system involving detailed material in the teacher's manual, student readers and workbooks at each level of instruction, Grades K- 6.

The Success in Reading and Writing program, on the other hand , while quite structured as to time modules and overall teaching approach, is more flexible in several ways:

  1. Reading is selected from available material in the everyday environment (e.g . magazines, newspapers, catalogues and lists).

  2. The relationship among students and teacher is much more informal and individualized.

  3. The Success method appears to generate more challenge and enthusiasm not only in the students but in teachers as well.

To test the effectiveness of the two teaching methods, two different schools were chosen, one as the Experimental Group which had the Success in Reading and Writing program in the second grade, and the Control Group which had the standard basal reading series in the second grade. In each case there were pre-test scores and posttest scores for the beginning and end of the second grade.

The study demonstrates that Success in Reading and Writing produces results at least equal to the Basal Reading Series. There is a strong case that the results are actually statistically and significantly better.

The results are sufficiently encouraging to justify a n expansion of the study to include a greater number of schools and covering more students in more grade levels for a broader span of time .

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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