Tímarit um menntarannsóknir - 01.01.2009, Page 46

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Tímarit um menntarannsóknir, 6. árgangur 2009
spelling problems.
With Direct Instruction (DI), specified skills
students require are explicitly taught to mastery
(Engelmann and Carnine, 1991; Marrchand-
Martella, Slocum, & Martella, 2004). Precision
Teaching (PT) (Lindsley, 1964) is a system of
fluency building strategies and tactics derived
from Experimental Behavior Analysis that
allows teaching effectiveness to be measured
(Binder, 1996; Potts, Eshleman, & Cooper,
1993). Accumulating data based on empirical
demonstrations suggest that when combined,
DI and PT represent a powerful educational
technology (Binder & Watkins, 1990; Johnson
& Layng, 1992; Johnson & Street, 2004).
Method
The Direct Instruction implementation proce-
dure of Model – Lead – Test was followed.
SAFMEDS cards (see Graf & Lindsley, 2002)
were applied for discrimination training.
In addition to frequent intermittent verbal
praise, clicks (Pryor, 1985) were tagged as an
immediate consequence on correct responding
during some of the instruction and fluency
practices. Component tool skills in decoding
individual sounds and letters, followed by
blending sounds, were intensively trained for
60 hours through hear/say, see/say, hear/write
and think/write learning channels. Composite
texts for decoding were introduced just towards
the end of the program.
Results
The obtained frequency data on decoding
fluency were recorded and analyzed on
Standard Celeration Charts. They show that
intensive training of phonemic tool skills to
high frequencies leads to fluency in complex
task performance like reading words and
composite texts based on the same phoneme –
grapheme correspondence. When assessed on
two composite texts the girl was able to read
the reference text coherently at 132 correct
syllables per minute, having accelerated 3.6x
from the start of the program. She also read
the second assessment text at almost the same
speed. The girl was assessed again seven
months after the program ended. She had
retained her reading speed and improved to
150 syllables per minute on the two texts, and
her skills generalized to two other texts that
were considered more advanced. The data
also showed a twofold acceleration within one
lesson in reading irregularly spelled words.
A triple acceleration within one lesson was
obtained in discriminating between words
with single and double consonants in their
middle, which is a common auditory problem
in Icelandic.
Discussion
This teaching intervention was exploratory and
demonstrated that the technique of combined
Direct Instruction and Precision Teaching
can be an impressive independent variable
for gaining reading fluency. In general the
present results lend additional support to the
growing body of evidence that demonstrate
the effectiveness of DI – PT procedures (see
in Moran & Malott, 2004). In particular this
study included a new language – Icelandic,
and extended previous findings on teaching a
student with autism to read in Icelandic by the
DI – PT technique (Ragnarsdóttir, 2007) to a
student with dyslexia.
The results are discussed in relevance
to recent findings of functional magnetic
resonance imaging of the brain. They show
that besides accelerating reading fluency,
intensive phonological training modifies the
structure and the function of reading regions in
the brain of students with dyslexia (Shaywitz
et al., 2003).

Guðríður Adda Ragnarsdóttir