The Advantages and Disadvantages of an Early Bird/Late Bird Program

<p>This project examined the advantages and disadvantages of an elementary school districts Early Bird / Late Bird Reading Program. The reading program allows for a reduced number of students for two hours of the school day, which is designated for teaching reading. The literature review states that, as the number of students-to-teacher ratio drops, the students’ and teachers’ morale, environment, and student academic achievement improves.</p> <p>A team of seven elementary school teachers, a reading specialist, and five district administrators were interviewed. Questions were semi-structured in nature, and asked both educators and administrators to comment on the advantages and disadvantages of the reading program. Consistent with the literature review, data-analysis revealed that there are many benefits of teaching reading when the student-to-teacher ratio is reduced to a number lower than 20. Major findings included a better learning environment, better student/teacher report, many academic benefits, and higher student performances. Through re-examination of the data, it is apparent that the Early Bird / Late Bird Reading Program has many advantages. With further investigation, it was also found that the program has one major disadvantage. While the program leads to a great reading program, it also leads to loss of instruction time in other curricular areas. In conclusion, the advantages of the reading program outweigh the disadvantages of this Early Bird / Late Bird Reading Program.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

Master's Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Education

Year

2002

Author dc:creator

• Gockel, Lisa

• Education

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholar.dominican.edu/education-print-theses/183

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholar.dominican.edu:education-print-theses-1182