Date Approved

5-4-2000

Embargo Period

6-21-2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A. in Special Education

Department

Interdisciplinary and Inclusive Education

College

College of Education

Advisor

Kuder, S. Jay

Subject(s)

Making Words Program; Inclusive education; Reading (Primary); Second grade (Education)

Disciplines

Special Education and Teaching

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine if the Making Words Program when incorporated into the whole language curriculum will help children with special needs improve their reading decoding. Meaningful growth on reliable instruments would indicate a possible correlation between the use of the Making Words Program and reading decoding development.

The study consisted of five second grade students ranging in age from 7 years to 8 years. All students were given instruction through a whole language based approach in addition to the Making Words Program. The treatment program consisted of one session per week for a duration of 20 weeks.

The Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests Level 1 and Level 2 were administered as a pre and posttest. The Gates-MacGinitie norm tables for Level 1 and Level 2 were used to obtain the percentile rank scores for the students.

Analysis of pre and posttest results seems to indicate that 100% of the students showed growth in their ability to decode words. This would seem to indicate that alternative programs in addition to whole language instruction are a viable way to increase special need students' decoding ability.

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