The Effects of Prosody-Based Reading Intervention on the Comprehension Skills of Late Elementary Poor Comprehenders

The divide between students who struggle with reading comprehension and their typically developing peers becomes increasingly significant in upper elementary grades when successful comprehension is crucial for academic success. To comprehend, students need to read fluently and accurately to detect the meaning of the text. Repeated reading builds fluency, but the effects on comprehension can be minimal. The present study compares repeated reading (RR) with repeated reading with modeling and text segmenting (RR+) which integrate sprosodic reading modeled by an expert reader and text chunking to highlight syntax to improve comprehension to determine to what extent RR+ provides additional benefit above and beyond RR for reading comprehension of struggling comprehenders in upper elementary grades. Participants, classified as poor comprehenders by their teachers and performance on the Gray Oral Reading Test 5th edition, took part in a within-subjects study utilizing three conditions, RR, RR+, and a business-as-usual (BAU) control group. RR consisted of repeated readings only. RR+ consisted of repeated readings with modeling and text segmenting. Finally, BAU consisted of traditional comprehension activities. Counterbalanced conditions were provided for each participant. Study groups met semiweekly for approximately 40 minutes for seven-week intervention. The Multidimensional Fluency Scale measured reading prosody while DIBELS 8th edition Maze assessment and the GORT-5 assessed comprehension. Results indicated that RR+ elicited significant improvement in reading comprehension when compared to BAU (partial η2= .48). Although not significant, RR also produced improvement in reading comprehension beyond that of BAU (partial η2 = .09). RR+ also led to improvement above and beyond RR (partial η2 = .14) though this was also not significant. The present study contributes to the literature by finding that upper elementary poor comprehenders, over half of whom were diagnosed with dyslexia, respond to repeated reading focused on prosodic skill. This benefits classroom teachers who teach students with learning disabilities in their regular education classrooms. Future research is needed to expand these findings by including more diverse participants in larger numbers and to determine the duration of benefit by measuring the long-term retention of improved reading comprehension performance.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Alabama Libraries

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Silvert, Cindy Dunn

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Filderman, Marissa J.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Barnard-Brak, Lucy
• Adams, Brittany M.
• Donovan, Carol A.

• fluency
• poor comprehenders
• prosody
• reading comprehension
• repeated reading
• syntax

Statement dc:rights

• All rights reserved by the author unless otherwise indicated.

Language dc:language.iso

en_US, English

Dc Identifier Other

1207982

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ir.ua.edu:123456789/17653