Master's Degree Thesis, 1997

Monitoring progress of students is essential for children with learning problems. Curriculum-based measurement is one effective method of measuring individual growth over time. The purpose of this study was to examine potential of the monitoring tool (ADEPT), used at the Center for the Study and Treatment of Dyslexia at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, to document growth of average first grade students in reading, spelling, and phonological tasks. This tool was developed in keeping with the emerging literature on curriculum-based measurement. It consists of tasks requiring phonological awareness and manipulation of phonemes, as well as tasks requiring reading and spelling words. Words were selected to be consistent with developmental patterns for sound/symbol correspondence learning, and tasks requiring reading of graded passages. This study was designed to test two hypotheses: (a) First graders will demonstrate a developmental progression in their acquisition of prereading/spelling and early reading/spelling skills that is consistent with the developmental phase theory of reading acquisition posed by Uta Frith. (b) The ADEPT will adequately be able to measure this progress. Three related questions were also addressed: (a) Are grade level and developmental level tasks used by the Center for Dyslexia sensitive measures of progress toward skilled reading among beginning readers? (b) Do average beginning readers demonstrate a consistent rate of growth through the initial decoding phase proposed by Frith (alphabetic phase)? (c) Are any of the component tasks of the battery better indicators of growth within the alphabetic phase at any point in the progress among typical first graders than are other tasks? Students were tested individually, once each grading period, for a total of 6 measurements. Results using multiple comparisons indicated that the students demonstrated growth throughout the year on alphabetic level as well as grade level tasks. Phonological awareness tasks also improved significantly except for manipulating words and pseudowords using letter tiles.