Running Head: READ ALOUDS: AN EFFECTIVE STRATEGY FOR STUDENTS 1

WITH LEARNING DIASBILITIES

Read Alouds: An Effective Strategy for Students with Learning Disabilities

Brittany Collet
Franciscan University

READ ALOUDS: AN EFFECTIVE STRATEGY FOR STUDENTS WITH

LEARNING DIASBILITIES

Introduction
In order for a student to begin their journey down a pathway of academic success,
he or she must first acquire the ability to read. It is for this reason that it is essential for
teachers to incorporate the five components of reading into their daily instruction
including phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.
Teachers should begin instruction by teaching students about the sounds each letter
makes and how to blend those sounds together to then create a word. Eventually, the
teacher will assist the student in understanding what specific words mean and how to read
at a smooth and coherent pace. Once the student has progressed through the first four
components, the teacher will subsequently finish off the reading process with the fifth
component comprehension. Comprehension is the heart and soul of reading (Reutzel
2008) because without comprehension, a student will not be able to understand what it is
that they are reading. Therefore, it is the teachers responsibility to effectively teach his or
her students specific strategies to ultimately benefit the way they comprehend a text.
Purpose
If you cant explain it simply, you dont understand it well enough
(http://www.goodreads.com). This quote stated by Albert Einstein truly exemplifies the
struggle that a majority of students with learning disabilities possess. In modern
classrooms, teachers have begun to put greater emphasis on students fluency and
vocabulary skills rather than assuring their students have full understanding of what is
being read. This causes students to have difficulty understanding the text that they are
reading. Thus, teachers need to create effective strategies in order to improve their
students comprehension skills. With this being said, a strategy that several teachers have

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found to be effective is called a read aloud. However, before incorporating this strategy
into the classroom, it is important to examine it more closely how exactly can read
alouds be an effective strategy for teachers to use to enhance the reading comprehension
of their students with learning disabilities?
In pursuit of a response to the above question, research was conducted at East
Elementary School in Steubenville, Ohio. The research consists of incorporating a read
aloud accommodation during one-on-one tutoring and was performed in order to
determine whether or not this strategy would enhance a student with learning disabilities
understanding of sight words. The students were assessed before the accommodation was
implemented to see how well they knew their sight words prior to the study. This initial
assessment required the students to read a selection of various sight words. After each
student was assessed, the students were then taught how to sound out their sight words by
integrating read alouds. This research took place over the course of ten weeks. The
students were reassessed at the end of the ten weeks to see if the accommodation made an
impact on the students comprehension of their sight words.
The hypothesis for this research is as followsstudents will have an easier time
reading their sight words when a teacher is reading aloud to them. For, if a student can
recognize and read their essential sight words this will subsequently change the way they
comprehend a piece of literature. The research will prove that students with learning
disabilities can improve their comprehension ability when a teacher implements read
aloud strategies into their instruction.
Review of Literature

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What a child can do today with assistance, she will be able to do by herself
tomorrow (www.azquotes.com). This quote once stated by Lev Vygotsky is one of the
main focal points of Rebecca Silvermans (2013) article, Read Alouds and Beyond. In this
article, Silverman starts off by addressing Vygotskys theory on how children learn best
through social collaboration. To illustrate, when teaching a child how to comprehend a
new vocabulary word, social interaction allows the teacher to model to the child how to
properly use that particular word. For that reason, Silverman conducted a case study to
see whether or not students in the Head Start program would improve their vocabulary
comprehension when provided with a read aloud accommodation. She randomly divided
26 classrooms into three different categories: control condition classroom, read aloud
classroom, and read aloud plus classroom. In the control condition classroom, the teacher
was instructed not to include the read aloud accommodation. While, in the read aloud and
read aloud plus classrooms, teachers were instructed to read 30 minutes of read aloud
instruction each day for 12 weeks. However, in the read aloud plus classroom, the teacher
also needed to include an additional 15 minutes of instruction throughout the day in order
to present the read aloud extension activities to the student. Furthermore, the read aloud
classroom focused primarily on defining, repeating, and reviewing the 48 target words
given. Meanwhile, in the read aloud plus classroom, the teacher introduced the target
words through having the students participate in drawing and hands on activities. After
the 12 weeks were completed and Silverman assessed each student, she was able to
conclude that the read aloud accommodation was indeed beneficial for, children in the
control condition improved by 5%, children in the read aloud only condition improved by
11%, and children in the read aloud plus condition improved by 16% (pg. 114).

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Silverman not only does a brilliant job of articulating her case study, but she also
incorporates specific ideas that help her readers to better understand why her study is
important. For instance, she begins her article by discussing Vygotskys theory of social
interaction, which helped readers realize that read alouds provide students with the
opportunity to interact with their teacher and fellow peers. In all of the articles that I
have read, this was the first time that I have heard this idea be brought up, and now
knowing this information I can better portray my hypothesis for my action research. For
the reason that Silvermans study showed that students with learning disabilities profit
from interacting during a read aloud because the teacher is modeling how to use a word
and using hands on activities to engage their students. However, the way that Silverman
explained the way that she assessed, I found extremely confusing for there were multiple
assessments that she used to test the students, but she did not specify the objective of
each assessment. Therefore, if Silverman were to continue doing more research on this
topic she should consider going more in depth with describing what each assessment is
supposed to do and why the assessments are beneficial to her study.
Similarly, according to Doris Baker (2015), instruction can make or break the way
that a student comprehends a topic. For that reason, Baker created a study to further
inspect his theory; he started off by selecting 39 first grade classrooms from 12 different
schools. The classrooms were then selected at random to either incorporate the read aloud
activities or to proceed doing their normal classroom activities. For those classrooms
assigned to include the read alouds, the teachers were given 12 narrative and 12
expository books that were about animals. Baker laid out lesson plans for each teacher
that included before, during, and after reading activities. One aspect that Baker wanted

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the teachers to put an emphasis on is to use structured dialogue throughout the during and
after read alouds because this allows students to talk about the various important ideas
that a text offers. The results of the study verified that the students significantly benefited
from the structured read aloud instruction. In addition to this, the results also showed that
students with learning disabilities improved with this specific type of instruction. Baker
concludes his study by expressing that the reason why the students in his study performed
better with the read aloud is because the teachers in his study were able to provide the
instructional excellence needed in order to improve the way that the students learn. He
states, Instructional quality in the context of this study was defined as teacher ability to
deliver an explicit instruction with fidelity (Baker 2015). Therefore, teachers need to be
able to know how to instruct in order to help their students not only understand a topic,
but also to help them perform better.
One of the key components that differentiate a good teacher from a bad teacher is
the way in which a teacher instructs a lesson. In this article, Baker describes an
instructional procedure regarding how to teach a read aloud to students, which now I can
take and try to implement a similar procedure into my future classroom. On the contrary,
I would have enjoyed reading more about how Bakers study affected students with
learning disabilities because he briefly mentioned that students with LD performed better
with this type of instruction. Therefore, if further research were to be conducted, Baker
should go more in depth with articulating how this type of instruction can change the way
a student with LD comprehends a topic.
In addition, there are a variety of testing accommodations that are provided for
students with learning disabilities, but which accommodation is most valuable to those

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students? According to Meloys (2002) article, students have an easier time

comprehending a test if the teacher is reading the test aloud to them rather than the
student silently reading the test. This accommodation allows students to show their
teachers that they understand the material without the teacher telling them the answer. In
addition to this fact, the article describes a research study conducted with middle school
students who either had or did not have a learning disability. The purpose of this study
was to see if this accommodation would benefit those students with learning disabilities,
without conflicting with students that do not have a learning disability. For that reason
Meloy assessed both types of students in a group setting with a read aloud administrator.
The administrator had a script that he/she had to follow as the students were being
evaluated. As a result, both types of students fortunately scored higher with the read
aloud accommodation. However, the scores also showed that non-learning disability
students actually did better with the read aloud accommodation than those students with
learning disabilities. Therefore, Meloy came to the conclusion that the read aloud
accommodation should only be used if a student struggles with comprehension because
this particular accommodation gives an unfair advantage to the students without a
learning disability.
This article articulates to teachers the significance of making certain
accommodations to their students to better assist their academic achievement. Teachers
so often times make accommodations for their students without doing enough research to
verify how to properly organize the accommodation. To illustrate, if a teacher had not
read a research article prior to beginning the read aloud accommodation then the teacher
would almost certainly make the mistakes that this article clearly points out not to do.

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Therefore, teachers should read this article before making that accommodation because
the article clearly lays out the dos and donts. To enhance this article, the author should
have included how this alteration made a difference in a students overall performance in
school. As a result, this article has revealed to me that when a teacher reads aloud to
his/her students it truly does benefit their academic achievement. Thus, this article helps
me further my hypothesis that the read aloud accommodation can benefit students with
learning disabilities that especially struggle with reading comprehension.
Lastly, what are the steps that teachers need to understand in order to implement
an effective read aloud? Isabel Beck (2001) addresses this question in her article, Text
Talk, by describing observations that she has made throughout her years of teaching. Her
first observation is that teachers should select texts that are challenging to their students.
Secondly, Beck suggests that the text should include pictures, especially if their students
are younger, because they can gain extra information about the text. Furthermore,
teachers need to ensure that their students have enough background knowledge about the
text, because students can more effectively comprehend a text when they have an
understanding of the topic. Beck advocates having a text talk with students in order to lay
groundwork of the topic. Essentially, a text talk is a series of open ended questions that
teachers utilize throughout readings, giving students opportunities to talk about the text,
thus connecting ideas to further their comprehension. However, when using the text talk
strategy teachers must be aware of their students and they must realize if their students
are relying heavily on the pictures and their background knowledge. Therefore, if a
teacher comes across this problem, then he or she should consider reading aloud books
that have few pictures and does not require students to have extensive background

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knowledge. Moreover, reading to a child is an easy task to do, but engaging a student in a
story is far more challenging. Beck concludes her article by stating, Key to the task is
keeping important text ideas in focus while monitoring childrens often limited responses
and scaffolding their ideas toward constructing meaning (pg. 19).
The majority of the articles that I have read have offered me information about
how read alouds can alter the way a child performs on an assessment. Nevertheless, in
order to further my research, I needed to know how to properly apply a read aloud to
students with learning disabilities. With this in mind, I choose Becks article because she
clearly explained specific ideas that teachers need to keep in mind when executing an
effective read aloud. Additionally, the ideas that Beck articulated in her article were based
upon observations that she has made throughout her years of teaching, which goes to
show her ideas that she presents in the article have been confirmed to be influential in the
classroom. On the other hand, Beck unfortunately did not go more in depth with
describing why certain strategies should not be used when doing a read aloud. Thus, if
Beck continued with her research, it would be interesting if she examined the variety of
read aloud strategies that teachers have tried use in the past that have been proven to not
be beneficial for students.
Methodology
Research on the methodology of implementing read alouds was conducted
throughout the course of ten weeks during the spring of 2016. The study involved oneon-one tutoring with two first grade boys, who both have reading disabilities that hinder
their ability to read. Each boy was tutored individually for twenty minutes, two times a
week. Before beginning the tutoring process, both students were given a pre-assessment

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in order to determine how many sight words each student could read and spell
individually. The pre-assessment included 125 sight words that the students were
instructed to read aloud to the tutor. The tutor then gave 27 sight words for the students to
spell. After pre-assessing the students, the tutor then began the read aloud instruction.
The tutor started off each lesson by reviewing ten sight words the students
struggled with during the pre-assessment. Following this review, the teacher read aloud
each word to the student and asked the student to repeat the word back to the tutor. The
tutor promptly transitioned into the student sounding out each phoneme of the word, in
order to help them blend the word together.
Ahead of time, the tutor selected a piece of text that incorporated the words the
students were going over that day. The tutor read aloud the chosen text to the students,
and followed by asking the students to point out each of the ten sight words. When tutor
finished reading the text, the student was given the sight words again to read aloud to the
tutor.
Once the student finished working on reading the ten sight words, they moved on
to practicing how to spell the four sight words missed in the pre-assessment. The tutor
began instruction by handing the students an index card with the spelling word, a visual,
and a sentence that uses the word in context. Then the tutor read aloud each phoneme of
the word, the word itself, and the sentence to the student. This allowed the student to
grasp an understanding of how the sounds of the word blend together, and how the word
is used in context. Afterward, the tutor sounded out each phoneme of the word, while the
students attempted to spell the word. If the student misspelled the word, the tutor would
read aloud the index card once morerepeating this process until they were able to spell

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the independently. After the student had successfully spelled the four words, they were
free to go back to class.
Following each session with the students, the tutor would look back over the
lesson to see what words needed further practice. If there were words that the students
needed more help with, then the tutor included those words into the next lesson. After the
ten weeks were completed, the students were reassessed with the pre-assessment in order
to track both students development, and determine the success of this specific
accommodation.
Findings
The results of the pre-assessment revealed that both students struggled with
reading and writing their sight words. Student A was able to read 42 out of the 125 words
presented to him. The words he was able to read were read clearly but without full
confidence. However, there were several words that he had trouble with sounding out,
causing him to become extremely frustrated with himself. Soon after the tutor had him
attempt to spell 27 key sight words, which he was able to spell 6 of the 27 words
correctly. However, Student B had a much more difficult time reading and writing the
words because he had both a reading disability and problems staying focused. As he was
reading and spelling each word, he consistently kept getting distracted by trying to talk to
the tutor and his fellow peers. He tried to make up words as he was reading because he
did not want to take the time to read all of the words. The tutor gave him reinforcements
in order to refocus his attention to the present task. Student B was able to read 22 of the
125 words correctly, and was able to spell 4 of the 27 words.

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Pre-Assessment:
Words Read
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0

Words Read

Student A

Student B

Pre-Assessment:
Words Spelled
7
6
5

Words Spelled

4
3
2
1
0
Student A

Student B

At the end of the ten weeks, the students were reassessed to see whether or not the
read aloud instruction made an impact on their reading comprehension. For the
reassessment both students were given the pre-assessment test again to see if they were
able to read and spell a greater amount of sight words than before. The results showed
that Student A was able read 83 out of the 125 sight words, and could spell 14 out of the
27 words, while Student B read 68 of the 125 words and was able to spell 15 of the 27
words.

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Final Assessement:
Words Read
100
80

Pre- Assessment

60

Final Assessment

40
20
0

Student A

Student B

Final Assessment:
Words Spelled
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0

Pre-Assessment
Final Assessment

Student A

Student B

As Student A was reading through the words, he had an easier time reading
without hesitation but he still had trouble taking the time to sound out challenging words.
Fortunately, since the first time that Student A was assessed, he has increased hi ability to
master words with the read aloud instruction. Each week he conquered all of the words
he was asked to read. The only two words that he had trouble with was one and they.
Therefore, the tutor put more emphasis on creating sentences that included these words,
so the sentence could be read aloud to the student until he/she could definitely read that
particular word. This method proved to be successful because the student confidently
read one and they during the reassessment process.

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Similar to Student A, Student B did not want to take the time to sound out each
phoneme in a word. For instance, the tutor asked him to read the word: this. Instead of
sound out the whole word, he immediately saw the /th/ sound and pronounced the word:
that. Due to the situation, the tutor made sure to place extra importance on reading aloud
each sound to the student so he/she could begin to grasp the concept of sounding out each
individual phoneme. Eventually, Student B began to realize he needed to pace himself to
recognize what words he was reading. Since, he realized this he has been able to read a
greater number of sight words because now he knows to take his time in order to read the
word correctly.
Overall, the results of this study verified that incorporating read aloud strategies
into a reading lesson could truly benefit a student. Read alouds can be used in all five
components of teaching a child how to read. That concept was proven through the fact
that both boys enhanced their sight word recognition, which will ultimately benefit them
as they are trying to comprehend a text. This becomes an imperative strategy, because
anyone who is trying to understand a selection of text will not be able to if they simply
cannot read it. Furthermore, the study revealed that students had an easier time trying to
spell words when they knew the denotation of the word. Ultimately, the results of this
study proved to be an effective strategy that teachers can use to enhance the reading
comprehension of their students with learning disabilities.
Recommendation
A few alterations should be made in order to expand upon this studys original
question if it was to be continued or performed again. To illustrate, this study should
include a larger group of students, who are diverse in age, for the purpose of ensuring that

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the read aloud accommodation has an affect on all ages of students. Additionally, the
study should also incorporate students with a variety of various learning disabilities
because disabilities can affect students learning capability in a multitude of ways. In
other words, a read aloud accommodation could be helpful to a student with ADHD, but
the accommodation may not have the same affect on a student who has autism. In that
case, further research must be conducted to ensure that all types of debilitated students
can benefit from read alouds.
Furthermore, this research process has proven that teachers should definitely
integrating read aloud strategies for students with learning disabilities into their daily
teaching instruction. Then again, there are few factors that teachers need to consider
before doing so. For instance, teachers need recognize what each one of their students
different learning styles are before performing a read aloud. With this being said there are
an assortment of ways that comprehension can be taught when using read aloud
strategies. Thus, teachers must figure out the best read aloud strategy that is going to
increase their students reading comprehension the most. As a result, this action research
has shown the numerous ways that read alouds could benefit the reading comprehension
of a student with a learning disability.

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References
A-Z Quotes. (n.d.). Retrieved April 01, 2016, from http://www.azquotes.com/
Baker, D. L. (2015). Effects of quality of instruction on student vocabulary and
comprehension during read alouds. Society For Research On Educational
Effectiveness, 1-4.
Beck, I. L., & McKeown, M. G. (2001). Text talk: capturing the benefits of read-aloud
experiences for young children. Reading Teacher, 55(1), 10-20.
Goodreads. (n.d.). Retrieved May 01, 2016, from http://www.goodreads.com/
Li, H. (20140. The effects of read-aloud accommodations for students with and
without disabilities: a meta-analysis. Educational Measurement: Issues and
Practice, 33(3) 3-16.
Meloy, L. (2002). The effect of a read aloud accommodation on test scores of
students with and without learning disability in reading. Pemedial and Special
Education, 22(4), 248- 255.
Reutzel, D. R., & Cooter, R. B. (2008). Teaching children to read: The teacher makes the
difference. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Merrill Prentice Hall.
Silverman, R., Crandell, J. D., & Carlis, L. (2013). Read alouds and beyond: the
effects of read aloud extension activities on vocabulary in head start
classrooms. Early Education And Development, 24(2), 98-122.

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Witmer, S. (2015). The read-aloud accommodation during instruction: exploring

effects on student self-perceptions and academic growth. Learning Disabilities:
A Contemporary Journal 13 (1), 95-109.

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Appendix A: Raw Data

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READ ALOUDS: AN EFFECTIVE STRATEGY FOR STUDENTS WITH

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Appendix B: Spelling Cards for Read Aloud Accommodation

Appendix C: Info graphic

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