This study will employ both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies to track the inception, operation and evaluation of an after-school literacy program. As groundwork for this study, a survey was given to the Learning Resource Teachers of the local public school board to identify the needs of their students. Information borne from this survey was used to influence the curricular strands of a pilot test program that ran from January through April of 2001 in two schools. In sum, 21 students participated in this pilot. The currently featured study will involve 36 students (18 of each experimental and control) who will be randomly placed in one of the two cohorts. The tutors will be undergraduate volunteers.

The following general research questions are ensuing: How do you design an after-school literacy program? During the implementation of the program, what are the roles and experiences of the participants? For all of the involved individuals, what are the derived benefits of the program?

Qualitative data will be collected through interviews with the volunteer tutors and tutees, observations of the tutoring sessions, surveys of the parents and regular classroom teachers and documents obtained from the activities of the program. Grounded theory will be used to postulate a set of procedural guidelines that would assist interested individuals in instituting a similar program. These guidelines will encompass the action from the initial research and development phase of the curriculum and materials, to the daily supervision of the program by the school-based coordinators. Existing relevant theory will be presented as a juxtaposition to the current program outcomes.

Quantitative data will be collected through pre-test and post-test learning measures of tutees’ literacy skills (receptive vocabulary, decoding, reading, comprehension, spelling and writing content and process).

Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Importance of the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Statement of Research Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Volunteer Tutoring Programs

The Tutor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Volunteer Tutoring Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Volunteer Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Supervision of Volunteers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Strategy Instruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Decoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

Letter Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10

Reading Comprehension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

Comprehending Narrative Text

Prediction Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

Graphic Organizers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

Comprehending Expository Text

Prediction Strategies with Graphic Organizers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13

Writing Composition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13

Grounded Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15

Program Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15

Pilot Test Study

Pilot Test Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17

Pilot Test Program Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18

Present Program

Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18

Training the Literacy Instructors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19

Program Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20

Qualitative Data Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Survey Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21

Field Notes and Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22

Interview Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22

Documentary Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23

Quantitative Data Collection

Pre-test Learning Measures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23

Post-test Learning Measures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24

In recent years, children’s literacy has been the subject of heightened political attention in the province of Ontario and on a national level in the United States. In Ontario in 1995, the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) was established. The EQAO has mandated province-wide testing as a means of identifying not only the effectiveness of the system, but also students’ learning at key stages for reading, writing and mathematics skills (EQAO, 2000). In particular, the literacy skills of students in Grades 3, 6 and now 10, are targeted for evaluation. A by-product of the EQAO testing is evident in elevated parental awareness and current public scrutiny. In 1997, the United States passed the America Reads Challenge Act (ARC). This federal legislation states that it is a goal that every child will independently read by the end of grade three (Wasik, 1998). This mandate is to be nationally funded, and accomplished through programs to assist parents in promoting literacy at home, and through volunteer tutoring programs.

However, even though these political agendum are framed with noteworthy intentions, they prove to be an encumbrance on North American educators. Ironically, these mandates come in the face of fiscal restraint and funding cutbacks. Thus, school personnel are finding it necessary to assemble a cadre of paraprofessionals and volunteers from the community, local university and/or parent population to fill the gap and tutor literacy skills. However, there are few volunteer literacy programs that have been proven to be effective. Even fewer protocols guide the development and implementation of volunteer literacy programs. This research will attempt to advance these pursuits.

The proposed research will trace the development and operation of an after-school literacy program in a suburban school in Southern Ontario. As a secondary goal, this study will be an exploration of the effectiveness of providing students with learning difficulties with a particular repertoire of learning strategies in this supplemental learning context. This after-school literacy program represents an ongoing partnership between the local chapter of the Learning Disabilities Association, the local public school board and the local university. Funding for the program is provided by a grant from the provincial government.

Prior to the research and development of the program an investigation into the experience of the local public school boards’ students and their educators commenced with a descriptive survey of the best practices of the Learning Resource Teachers. These special education teachers offered insights about the specific learning needs of their students. Across all of the elementary grades (Grades 1 to 8), the three most common curriculum areas of need were: reading comprehension, spelling, and writing organization. Thus, the goal for this featured program will be to answer the call with a curriculum that addresses these three key literacy skills.

A literature review of strategy instruction has been completed to identify what comprises an effective tutoring program and what are the learning strategies that promote literacy skills. Empirically supported strategies have been selected to address the highlighted learning needs of the students within the public school board. The objective is to deliver to these students a theoretically sound curriculum, in a low student-to-instructor ratio, during the after-school period.

An initial pilot test study was completed from January through April of 2001. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the curriculum and materials. The pilot test method is described in Chapter 3 and the results will be presented in the future Chapter 4. Essentially, the program pedagogy will remain the same from the pilot test study to the present program. The number of participants (tutors and tutees) will change, and a few operational modifications will be made to the program. It should be noted that throughout this document the terms instructor/tutor and student/tutee are synonymic and both groups are collectively the participants in the study.

Given the contemporary focus on literacy education vis. a vis. funding cutbacks to education, innovative solutions need to be explored to provide students with the literacy skills that they require. This research proposal is an answer to that call. The primary purpose of the present study is to document the inception and implementation of an after-school literacy program that has been borne out of a partnership between the local chapter of the Learning Disabilities Association, the public school board and the university. The ensuing product will be a grounded theory that postulates the components of an effective volunteer literacy program. The integral roles of the school-based coordinator and volunteer instructors will be explored. In an evaluative vein, this research will measure the learning gains of the tutees and the professional growth experience of the instructors who are all undergraduates aspiring to be teachers.

These purposes have prompted the following research questions:

Tutoring is cited as being the oldest form of education (Wasik & Slavin, 1993). In general, a tutor is an instructor or teacher who assists and supports the learning of a tutee. Tutors may be teachers, community volunteers or students. Roe and Vukelich (2001) note that tutoring does have a positive affect on the reading achievement of children when the tutors are teachers. Wasik and Slavin (1993) add that tutoring programs that use certified teachers are effective, but costly. Examples of these programs include Reading Recovery (Clay, 1985 as cited in Wasik & Slavin, 1993) and Success for All (Slavin, Madden, Karweit & Livermon, 1990, as cited in Wasik & Slavin, 1993). Both of these use certified teachers who have extensive professional development and tutor one-on-one. Programs that use paraprofessionals are less costly and may be effective if these individuals are trained and provided with structured manuals and materials (Wasik and Slavin, 1993). Indeed, good structured tutoring programs tend to have trained tutors, materials and protocols (Roe & Vukelich, 2001). Perhaps, the key indicator of success is the tutoring program itself?

Volunteer Tutoring Programs

Since it is unclear as to whether tutoring programs taught by adult volunteers yield positive results, Wasik (1998) reviewed 17 tutoring programs to uncover some answers. Unfortunately, only two programs employed an experimental design: the Howard Street Tutoring Program and School Volunteer Development project. Howard Street Tutoring Program (Morris, Shaw & Perney, 1990) has a professional teacher that trains the tutors and creates their lesson plans. The lessons are theoretically based and similar to Reading Recovery tutoring sessions (Wasik, 1998). During training the tutors spend time observing and then discussing tutoring techniques. Their lessons receive feedback from their supervisor. One-to-one modeling and feedback between the supervisor and tutor continues for several sessions. Tutees, who are in grades two or three, receive two one-hour sessions each week for a year (Wasik, 1998). At the end of this period, post-tests on the tutees and matched controls have revealed overall positive effects for tutored group. It seems apparent that the role of the supervisor is key. Having said that, the development of lesson plans and monitoring of tutors did not seem to have a documented protocol (Wasik, 1998). Unlike The Howard Street Tutoring Program, the School Volunteer Development project has been out of operation since the 1980’s (Wasik, 1998). This latter program utilized volunteer tutors who worked with primary and junior aged students each day for 30 minutes for one year. The tutors were provided training and ongoing clarification from a reading specialist throughout the tutoring program. On a standardized test, tutees outperformed their untutored control group in reading.

Volunteer Training

In addition to this, there is sparse literature on how tutors use their training in their subsequent tutoring sessions (Roe and Vukelich, 2001) Roe and Vukelich (2001) note that Shannon (1998) and Wasik (1997) caution that for volunteer tutoring programs to be effective the volunteers must be provided with initial and ongoing training and supervision. This is especially the case if the tutors are required to make any choices or decisions during the tutoring sessions. If the tutors are undersupported and not supervised, a number of problems occurred. Roe and Vukelich (2001) found that tutors did not consistently deliver prescribed tutoring sessions as they were trained to. The tutors often omitted reading strategy instruction. The result was that the tutors tended to devise their own versions of lessons. To add to this, the tutors selected leveled books that were too difficult for their tutees. Juel (1996) contends that scaffolding and using explicit modeling should be effective strategies in the tutors’ arsenal. Even though Adler (1999, as cited in Roe and Vukelich, 2001) found that trained tutors implemented broad components from the program, unfortunately, other components such as cognitive strategies were inconsistent.

Supervision of Volunteers

Since Juel (1996) notes that the tutoring activities are more important than the length of time of each session, attention must be devoted to the daily operations of the tutoring sessions. In her review of tutoring programs Wasik (1998) found that the role of the designated on-site coordinator or supervisor is integral. This individual should be a specialist in reading instruction and able to work with volunteers and give them feedback on their tutoring. Roe and Vukelich (2001) suggest that supervisors make the lesson delivery as easy as possible and highlight the integral nature of the program’s guidelines. The lessons must be structured with clear objectives and basic learning activities (Wasik, 1998). At the micro-level, liasion between the classroom teacher and tutor should be coordinated by the supervisors (Wasik, 1998). This collaboration could potentially assist the tutee. To maintain morale, the program must be able to show that it is effective for the tutees and rewarding for the tutors. Additionally, partnerships should be nourished between the schools and the volunteer source be it the university or community.

Our rapidly changing society demands that individuals be literate, life-long learners. To achieve this end, students must possess a flexible repertoire of learning strategies that promote reading and writing. Promotion of these basic literacy skills is especially essential for students with learning difficulties. Explicit cognitive strategy instruction has been found to be a viable venue to instruct students with learning difficulties (e.g., Harris & Graham, 1996; Scheid, 1993). In addition to this, metacognitive information explaining when and where to utilize each learning strategy, enhances the learning process (e.g., Pressley & Woloshyn, 1995, Wood, Woloshyn & Willoughby, 1995).

Providing learners with information about what, when, why and how they learn is an effective technique for improving students’ learning (Pressley & Woloshyn, 1995). Metacognition is an individual’s awareness of, and ability to monitor, adjust, and regulate his or her cognitive actions with regard to learning (Swanson & Alexander, 1997). Specifically, this monitoring includes checking problem-solving attempts, planning and evaluating the effectiveness of an action, testing and revising strategies, and taking remediating action to overcome difficulties encountered (Baker & Brown, 1984, as cited in Chan & Cole, 1986). Cognitive strategy instruction encourages students to think about their learning across a variety of situations (Ashman & Conway, 1997). Swanson and Alexander (1997) comment that learning disabled readers do possess a certain degree of metacognitive knowledge in their long-term memories, but cannot always access it. This access needs to be facilitated through some means of transportation. A vehicle for this type of intensive instruction is typically a specialized teaching method or program.

Provision of this metacognitive information is one of the fundamental underpinnings of explicit cognitive strategy instruction. Gaskins and Elliot (1991) among others (e.g. Pressley & Woloshyn, 1995; Swanson, 1999; Deshler & Schumaker, 1986) state that students learn best when strategy instruction is explicit versus implicit. This is notably the case with reading and writing instruction (Woloshyn & Elliott, 1998). There are eight basic components of explicit strategy instruction. These steps often consume several lessons. In the initial stages, the teachers state both the process and content objectives and tell students why it is helpful to learn a particular strategy. As a way of impressing the importance of strategy use, teachers then share personal experiences of strategy use with their students. Then teachers explicitly tell students when to use the strategy and under what circumstances the strategy is useful. The process and steps for carrying out the strategy are reviewed, and the teacher models the strategy while verbalizing metacognitive information about the learning strategy. Students are encouraged to experiment and practice the strategy in several learning contexts. Gradually, the teacher’s directives are withdrawn to encourage the students to be independent strategy users. Educators provide a supportive environment in which to apply these skills and give reminders to use strategies on a consistent basis.

Decoding is the understanding of how letters or symbols relate to sounds. In a figurative sense, decoding skills are the tools for the mechanical task of reading. As decoding skills become more automatic, cognitive attention can be directed to reading for meaning or comprehension (Pressley & Woloshyn, 1995). However, many young readers and students still experience difficulty cracking the reading code.

The key elements to successful reading are phonological awareness (identifying the sounds in words and relating them to letters), letter-sound correspondence and blending skills (Lloyd, 1998). Currently, in many Ontario schools, the Jolly Phonics (Lloyd, 1998) program is being used as a method of instruction for decoding with emergent readers (Dare, 1999). Jolly Phonics is an early systematic phonics program that teaches the 42 main sounds of English. This includes consonant sounds, blends, digraphs and a few irregular vowel patterns. Beginning reading students are presented with a multi-sensory, kinesthetic method that commences with learning the letter sounds and formation and moves on to blending sounds to form words and then to reading (Lloyd, 1998). To learn the sounds of letters, students are taught an associative hand action: for example, for the sound of the letter ‘s’, students curve and slither their hands in the motion of a snake while they make the sound of this letter. This kinesthetic aid is used to promote independent recall of the sound of the letter. Students are also encouraged to make the sounds of letters as they practice tracing and forming the letters on primary print lines. Upon successful acquistion of a few of the letter sounds, blending these letter sounds together is encouraged. One of the first words to be blended and successfully read is, "s-a-t" (Lloyd, 1998). The strategic benefit in the Jolly Phonics program lies in its ability to link the letter sounds to the symbols in a motivating manner.

A pedagogical predecessor to the Jolly Phonics program is the use of imagery as an approach for developing knowledge of letters and their sounds. Ehri, Deffner and Wilce (1984; as cited in Pressley & Woloshyn, 1995) found it effective for children to view drawings of pictures with the letter responsible for the initial sound embedded in it. These images gave the students clues about the sounds of the letters. Students could also print a letter and convert their letter into a drawing by adding other relevant details. Most importantly the students need to see the letter in their drawing and know the sound that it makes. It has been noted (Ehri et al., 1984; as cited in Pressley & Woloshyn, 1995) that children receiving this type of integrated picture training could recall more letter-sound relations. In the decoding lessons, the current research will marry this integrated visualization strategy with the Jolly Phonics curriculum materials.

Phonological decoding skills are prerequisites to more sophisticated reading approaches such as using letter patterns or what is otherwise known as reading by analogy. To read by analogy, students use a familiar letter pattern to assist them to read a rhyming analogous word. This is accomplished by readers learning to identify common letter patterns (e.g. "i-m-e" as in "time") in unknown words, and using letter-sound strategies and the principle of rhyme, to read an analogous word such as, "dime". The more often a word is successfully sounded out, the stronger the connection becomes between the letter patterns in the word (Adams, 1990, as cited in Pressley & Woloshyn, 1995). Ideally over time, the sequence of the letter patterns become familiar because the brain is programmed to look for patterns (Cunningham, 2000). Cunningham (2000) postulates that students who learn to look for patterns in new words will be better spellers and decoders.

An entire method of teaching reading to students with reading difficulties has been built on this basic concept of reading by analogous letter patterns. Gaskins (1998) found that students can decode and read unknown words by using analogous known words. Her program is centred around 120 letter patterns, called the "Benchmark 120", that are a constant as they sound the same and are read in the same fashion. The Benchmark teachers model and provide guided practice of word identification strategies within the context of connected text (Gaskins, 1998). It is the goal of the program to develop word attack skills in students so that they can use them independently (Pressley & Woloshyn, 1995).

Allen (1998) reports similar success with using rhyme. The integrated strategies approach is built on the understanding of rhyme and learning key words and their spelling patterns (rimes) to spell and decode new words by analogy. This instruction is supported by research that indicates that readers look for letter patterns rather than individual letters as they decode words. This technique is often termed, the "word family" approach and it is based on the regularity of letter patterns or rimes. When a reader comes upon a familiar rime in an unknown word, they can depend upon a consistent pronunciation for the rime. This is the rime-rhyme connection. The rime-rhyme connection can also be used to support spelling development by making reference to a rhyming word when trying to spell an unknown word. When children are able to read words easily, attention can be devoted to comprehension and personal response (Allen, 1998).

It is often the case that students with learning disabilities are burdened with compromised memory, which impacts on their information processing capability and thus poses instructional dilemmas (Ashman & Conway, 1997). Vaughan, Gersten and Chard (2000) state that students with learning disabilities experience poor reading comprehension as a result of difficulties with reading strategically and auditing their own understanding. Wong (1980; as cited in Scanlon, Duran, Reyes & Gallego, 1992) notes that students with learning disabilities do not independently identify important concepts or draw relationships between ideas without cueing. Vaughan et al. (2000) found that one of the most effective comprehension interventions involves text structuring. Text structuring is a general term for the categorization and organization of text that has been read. The current research study will utilize predictive and summarizing strategies along with cognitive organizers to structure text. This will be attempted for both narrative and expository text.

Comprehending Narrative Text

The use of prediction as a pre-reading strategy is common among educators. Previous studies (e.g., Hansen, 1981, as cited in Denner & McGinley, 1992) have found that readers who activate their prior knowledge and connect it to the text can enhance reading comprehension. This is the multi-step process of formulating predictions and evaluating them. Making good predictions requires readers to make inferences about what might happen in a story and then it requires the readers to synthesize the information and evaluate their inferences (Coffman, 1997). Denner and McGinley (1992) found that when grade seven and eight students wrote down their predictions into a story line, comprehension was facilitated. Similarly, Davis (1994) found that for grade three students both inferential and literal comprehension was improved with the use of a pre-reading story mapping procedure. In this study (Davis, 1994) made use of an organizer to house the predictions. Support for the practice of making predictions before reading has been established. As a means of making these predictions, it has been shown that students should take the time to record their predictions in a story format or graphic organizer.

Graphic Organizers

When listening to, or reading narratives a schema is being built up that includes story elements (characters, setting, problem, solution, and theme/moral). This story element knowledge aids the comprehension of future narratives (Williams, 1993). Williams (1993) noted that students with learning difficulties have recall deficits in identifying such story elements, especially themes.

There are many different terms for the use of a graphic display of information including: cognitive organizers, graphic organizers, semantic maps, tree diagrams or concept maps (Horton, Lovitt & Bergerud, 1990). All of these strategies engage a visual-spatial arrangement of information that is connected graphically to form a meaningful diagram.

Idol (1987) used a graphic organizer to systematize prior knowledge and the elements of a narrative. Idol (1987) found that a story mapping strategy was effective at improving the reading comprehension of poor readers and skilled readers at the grade three and four level. These improvements were found to generalize to measures of listening comprehension, criterion-referenced tests and the students’ journal writing. Story mapping is identifying the common components of a narrative story into a framework. This story mapping strategy is based on forming a connection between the readers’ prior knowledge structures or schemata, and the new, textual material. It is possible that the story mapping technique provided the readers with an organizational framework for thinking about important information to look for when reading narrative stories. The teachers explicitly modeled the strategy and told the students that they were expected to use the strategy, striving towards an independent level of usage.

Boyle and Weishaar (1997) operationally define cognitive organizers as cognitive maps or visual displays that students use to arrange details from text so that the implicit relationships between the ideas are made explicit. Students with learning difficulties developed their own organizers and experienced benefits to their reading comprehension as compared to a more conventional reading routine. The cognitive organizers had assisted the students with learning disabilities to comprehend literal text. The second finding was that the participants who completed student-generated (not the expert-generated) cognitive organizers exhibited higher inferential comprehension scores then the control group. Through strategy training, students became active, independent learners. These cognitive organizers facilitate the students in remaining actively involved in the reading process.

In a similar fashion as with narrative text, the use of prediction strategies can enhance the comprehension of expository text. Scanlon, Duran, Reyes and Gallego (1992) involved students in making predicting relationships on a semantic map and encouraged cooperative knowledge sharing to facilitate the comprehension of expository text. Through a collaborative learning structure, Scanlon et al., (1992) found that students with learning difficulties shared their prior knowledge, engaged in questioning and justified their ideas. The instructor modeled the process of completing a semantic map based on an expository reading passage. The first step in this process was to identify the main idea and note the connected details. Then the details were clustered into related concepts and labeled. These headings formed the subtopics. The authors state that they have found that the interactive semantic mapping strategy has been successful with students with learning disabilities from grades 4 through 12 with expository text. This effectiveness was measured from pre-test to posttest and on a one month delayed posttest.

The observation exists that many students cannot recognize the components of a passage and this negatively impacts on their comprehension of passages (Stevens, 1988). This is especially true for poor readers. Less skilled readers recall less information from what they read and the information is not related to the main idea of the passage (Brown & Smiley, 1977, as cited in Stevens, 1988). It was the goal of Stevens (1988) to make poor readers aware of the cognitive processes used to comprehend and organize ideas presented in text. These students received direct instruction on the organization of concepts presented in expository text. Stevens (1988) found that for remedial reading students that this strategy training could significantly effect their ability to identify the main idea in expository passages. Additional support for these findings is provided by Jitendra, Hoppes and Xin (2000) who found that students with learning difficulties could be successfully trained to identify and generate main idea statements using main idea strategy instruction. This led to increased reading comprehension for these students as well.

Horton, Lovitt, and Bergerud (1990) examined the performance of students (remedial education, non-disabled and those with learning disabilities) who received instruction about how to use a graphic organizer and found that the graphic organizers were more effective than self-study for the remedial, non-disabled and students with learning disabilities. Another benefit of graphic organizers (Horton et al., 1990) is that they combine reading, studying and evaluating into one exercise. Graphic organizers are an efficient way to condense expository information and aid recall.

It is known that reading and writing depend on many of the same cognitive elements such as knowing the meanings of words in order to read them and write with them (Shanahan, 1997). If reading and writing are combined in an integrated fashion, we could increase our chances of understanding text and improving learning (Shanahan, 1997). Shanahan (1997) also states that this type of integrated instruction does lead to better attitudes towards learning. The current study promoted the connection between reading and writing by using the same cognitive organizers as the primary instructional tool for reading comprehension and writing composition.

The writing process is not one that comes naturally to many students. The phases that accomplished writers adhere to begin with planning and organizing their ideas before embarking on the initial draft or rough copy. Next, this draft is edited and re-written and perhaps edited and re-written several times before production of the final copy is realized. Steps in the process are often minimized or forgotten by students. McAlister, Nelson and Bahr (1999) report that students with learning difficulties cannot explain the prewriting elements of planning and organizing. Their knowledge of revising is focused on editing conventions more than on revising content. Students require a systematic and strategic way to deal with the requirements of writing composition.

Sexton, Harris and Graham (1998) uncovered modest to large gains in writing performance with students with learning disabilities who completed a scaffolded, collaborative strategy for planning and writing essays. These students were given self-regulating instructions for managing the strategy and the writing process. Consequently, the students spent time planning their writing which resulted in compositions that included a position, at least three supporting reasons and a concluding statement (Sexton, Harris & Graham,1998).

Memory mnemonics or memory aids can be used to reinforce the five steps of the writing process. The mnemonic word, "P. O. W. E. R." (Stevens & Fear, 1987, as cited in Pressley & Woloshyn, 1995) contains a letter that stands for each of these five steps. The first step in this process, the "P", which is planning. In planning students decide on a topic to write about and consider how this will be executed. In the "O" or organization step, students categorize or organize their ideas in a logical fashion. The "W" in the mnemonic represents writing the first draft. The "E" step is the editing and the "R" step is the revising or rewriting in which the students complete their final copy. Based on the above research, the current study has the goal of highlighting the link between reading and writing and using a mnemonic aid to stress the steps of the writing process.

This research blends several types of data with the goal of grounding a theory that will outline how to develop and execute an effective literacy program. Grounded theory is a general methodology that is applicable to both quantitative and qualitative studies (Denzin & Lincoln, 1998). The role of quantitative data will be explained below. Qualitative data will be systematically gathered, analyzed and compared to existing research in the general field of volunteer tutoring programs. In an attempt to obtain as many perspectives as possible, data will be collected from the volunteer instructors, the students in the program, their mainstream teachers, and their parents. The data collection methods will be audiotaped interviews, surveys, field notes and the gathering of documents such as instructor evaluations and student work samples.

Coding of these data will attempt to conceptualize how the codes relate to each other as hypotheses to be integrated into the grounded theory (Denzin & Lincoln, 1998). Denzin and Lincoln also state that the theory proposed should be grounded in the interplay with data and developed through the course of the research. It is the intent of the researcher to look at patterns of interaction between various types of data to propose what constitutes effective program operation.

Acting as the researcher, my personal theories and experience in this field of study will be stated in an attempt to identify how these factors may play against the gathered data. Having said that, Denzin and Lincoln (1998) note that theoretical sensitivity or attentiveness that comes from field knowledge enhances coding. For the past eleven years, I have been in an administrative role in the private sector supplemental education system. In this study, my role as a researcher with field experience is bound to affect the participants. However, it is believed that a broader objective will prevail: the grounded theory that results will reflect a deeper understanding and alternative application of after-school tutoring.

Often, the literacy difficulties that many students experience cannot be simply attributed to a single problematic source. Swanson and Alexander (1997) found that the reading deficiencies in students with learning difficulties could be attributed to a combination of the following processes: phonological, orthographic, semantic, metacognitive and/or working memory. Consequently, the focus of this after-school literacy program will be to present elementary students with cognitive strategies in the strands of decoding, reading comprehension and writing organization. The instructors will follow scripted lesson plans which will be consistent with explicit instruction (e.g., Ashman & Conway, 1997).

Embedded in these lesson plans are the cognitive strategies that are specific to the strand. Decoding will have two levels of instruction. For students who are at the rudimentary letter-sound correspondence stage, the lessons will focus on integrating the strategies of imagery and integrated picture mnemonics (e.g., Pressley & Woloshyn, 1995) with materials from the Jolly Phonics program (Lloyd, 1998). To achieve this the tutors will model and encourage the students to visualize the featured letter integrated into the illustration on the Jolly Phonics worksheet. For students with these basic skills, decoding words in chunks or patterns of letters is the next phase. The letter pattern awareness lessons will focus on using the patterns in the Benchmark 120 Word List (Gaskins & Elliot, 1991). Using the concept of rhyme, or the knowledge of orthographic spelling patterns, the strategies of imagery and analogy (e.g., Gaskins & Elliot, 1991) will be presented to the students. Specifically, imagery will be used to impress the letter pattern in the student’s mind with the goal of future automatic recall on sight. The concept of analogy or creating rhyming word families will be used to re-inforce the reading of a word and generalize its letter pattern across to members of its family.

To enhance understanding or comprehension of text a milieu of strategies will be married into one organizer. The featured reading comprehension strategies will include prediction (e.g., Hanen & Pearson, 1983), story grammar (e.g., Idol, 1987) and summarization (e.g., Killick, 1986). These strategies will be integrated into a graphic organizer called a "Predictive Story Frame". The "Predictive Story Frame" resembles a rectangular picture frame with two shadowed regions around the outside perimeter. The outer region is designated for the pre-reading predictions and the middle region is designated for the mid-reading predictions based on the actual events of the story up to the middle of the passage. The centre of the frame is for the actual summary of the story. Each of the shadowed regions have places to note the story grammar components: characters, setting, problem, and solution. The centre of the frame includes: character, setting, problem, solution and the story’s events at the beginning, middle and end. For non-fiction text, prediction and summarization strategies will be integrated into an organizer called, the "C & C House". The "C & C House" is a simple illustration of a three-room house that includes labels for the components of expository material: introduction, thesis, topics, and conclusion. The porch of the house is for making predictions based on the pictures and sub-titles of the text. Then the expository material is read and summarized using the house structure in the following manner. The doormat to the house is to note the points in the introduction. The door to the house is to reiterate the thesis statement. The three rooms of the house are each for the sub-topics of the piece. The conclusion is noted on the roof of the house.

The writing composition component of the program will use these two organizers the "Predictive Story Frame" and the "C & C House" along with memory mnemonics to reinforce the five steps of the writing process. This mnemonic is the word, "P. O. W. E. R." (Stevens & Fear, 1987, as cited in Pressley & Woloshyn, 1995). In the first step of this process, "P"stands for planning. This will take the form of brainstorming (e.g., Harris & Graham, 1996) ideas for potential writing topics. In the "O" or organization step, the graphic organizers that were used in the comprehension lessons will be used to facilitate the writing organization. Thus, for the primary and early junior level students, the "Predictive Story Frame" will act as a worksheet to facilitate the organization of ideas for a narrative composition. In a similar way, the "C & C House" is a working document to organize expository text information. The "W" in the mnemonic represents writing the first draft. The "E" step is the editing and this is done with a series of editing questions that will be used as prompts to ensure that all necessary components are included in the draft. For narratives, these 22 questions are layered on the "Predictive Story Frame" (e.g., "Is the place or setting for the story described?"; "Is the main character described?": "Is the critical event described?") and for expository writing these 21 questions are layered on the "C & C House" (e.g., "Is there a thesis statement?"; "Is the topic introduced?"; "Does the passage have a definite conclusion?"). Finally, the "R" is the re-writing phase in which the students will complete their final draft copy. This final draft will be word processed with graphic illustrations and bound for presentation.

The participants in the pilot test study were 21 students (Grades 1-7) from two schools within the local school board. The two chosen schools were from a group of schools that volunteered, and were ultimately selected by the Superintendent of Special Education. The first school provided 12 participants and the second provided 9 participants. These participants were identified by their classroom teacher and/or the school’s Learning Resource Teacher (male: n=12 and female: n=9). The selection criteria noted that the students may or may not be identified with a learning exceptionality, however, they may be experiencing difficulties in one or more of the following areas: decoding, spelling, vocabulary, reading comprehension and writing organization. All students were pre-tested and post-tested using the learning measure described under Quantitative Data Collection. Within each divisional level (i.e., Primary: n=11; Junior: n=7 and Intermediate: n=3) there was at least one cohort of three students who were grouped together for instruction. This procedure was established in an attempt to reduce feelings of isolation from peers.

Eighteen volunteer undergraduate instructors from the Department of Child and Youth Studies at the local university participated in this program. All tutors except one were female and all were in their third or fourth year of their baccalaureate degree. These tutors attended training sessions that provided them with the knowledge and rationale that supports the efficacy of explicit strategy instruction. At the training sessions these volunteer instructors were given scripted lesson plans which they followed throughout the course of the program. In addition to this, each instructor was given a summary of the assessment results that had been compiled on their students. The instruction in a ratio of two tutees to one tutor or three tutees to one tutor (average 2.3-to-1). These instructors received volunteer experience credit for their participation on their university transcripts.

The author served as the school based co-ordinator or program supervisor. I was responsible for the training and support of the instructors and daily operations of the program. Throughout the Course of the pilot test, I collected the qualitative data and acted as the examiner for the assessment battery.

The pilot test program was carried out over the course of 10 weeks during the middle of the school year (January through April 2001). The students attended two, 90-minute sessions each week. The sessions were held after-school (approximately 3:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.) in the libraries of each respective school. In sum, the students each had 20 sessions or at total of 30 hours of programming.

The three tenets of the program were: decoding, reading comprehension and writing composition instruction. Phonics and decoding instruction was included for the full duration of the program. For the first 5 weeks, reading comprehension instruction was emphasized and then for the last 5 weeks, writing composition instruction was the focus.

A typical 90-minute session followed a predetermined framework. For the first 10-15 minutes of the session, the students had an informal social time and snack with their literacy instructor. This period provided the literacy instructor the opportunity to build rapport with his/her students.

Following the snack, the students received approximately 30 minutes of instruction that was devoted to decoding. For the most part, the primary grade students received instruction that focused on letter-sound knowledge, whereas, the junior/intermediate students received instruction that focused on learning and using letter patterns.

The next 30 minutes was devoted to reading comprehension instruction (in the first 5 weeks) then writing composition instruction (in the last 5 weeks). Students in the primary and early junior grades read narrative stories and utilized the "Predictive Story Frame". Students in the later junior and intermediate grades read expository articles and utilized the "C & C House". In a similar fashion, primary and junior grade students wrote narrative stories, whereas, intermediate students wrote a short expository composition.

Qualitative and quantitative data was collected. Anecdotal notes and observations were taken throughout the program. Interviews with the tutors and students were completed. Surveys of the parents and teachers were done post-program. A focus group discussion was held with six of the classroom teachers who had students that participated in the program. Students’ academic progress was tracked and compared from pre-test to post-test. Pre-tests were completed solely by the researcher. Data from the pilot test study will be presented as the introduction to Chapter 4. Post-program assessments were completed within two weeks of the completion of the program. Two graduate students were trained and assisted with these tests.

The participants in this study will be 36 students (Grades 1-8) from one school within the local school board. Just as in the case of the pilot test program, this school has been chosen to participate by the Superintendent of Special Education. Primary decision factors were the school’s close proximity to the university and the school’s Vice Principal was a former teacher at one of the schools that was part of the pilot test study. The students have been identified by their classroom teacher (male: n=21 and female: n=15). The selection criteria were the same as noted in the pilot test study in that the students may or may not be identified with a learning exceptionality, however, they may be experiencing difficulties in one or more of the following areas: decoding, spelling, vocabulary, reading comprehension and writing organization. Within each divisional level (i.e., Primary: n=16; Junior: n=15; and Intermediate: n=4). The 36 students have been randomly divided into two groups of 18: the first group represents cohort one which received the program from September through December of 2001 and the second group represents cohort two which will receive the program from January through April 2002. In this way cohort two acts as a control for cohort one and vice versa.

The tutoring sessions will be delivered by second, third and fourth year undergraduate students. All of these volunteers are females who are majoring in Child and Youth Studies at the local University. These individuals are interested in gaining practical experience to prepare them for application to Faculty of Education Pre-Service programs. For this experience, the volunteers will act as literacy instructors for one session per week. The sessions will run on Tuesdays and Thursdays. For cohort one, there was total of 19 volunteer undergraduate instructors; for cohort two, 18 volunteers will be involved. This meant that for cohort one, there were the student-to-instructor ratio was 1.9-to-1 and for cohort two, the ratio will be 2-to-1. It should be noted that two of the instructors in cohort one were volunteers for the pilot test, and seven of the instructors from cohort one remained on as volunteers for cohort two. All volunteers will receive experience credit on their university transcripts for their participation.

Throughout the instructional sessions, supervision and support is provided by a school-based co-ordinator. For cohort one, the school-based co-ordinator, "Lynda", was a female graduate student from the Faculty of Education. Lynda has taken graduate level courses in strategy instruction and is completing her thesis research in the area of learning disabilities. For cohort two, the school-based co-ordinator is a female, fourth year honors student from the Department of Child and Youth Studies. This individual, "Susan", is a former volunteer instructor from the pilot test study and from cohort one. Susan was an exemplary instructor, who was particularly good at individualizing her lessons and maintaining on-task attention with her tutees. Susan is aspiring to be a teacher.

The objective of the training sessions is to provide the instructors with the theory that supports explicit strategy instruction and to expose them to the teaching resources. At the initial training session, the volunteers are given background information about the program from the Executive Director of the Learning Disabilities Association. Then the instructors are provided with explicit modeling of the strategies that will be used within the program by a full-time Faculty of Education member and myself. The lessons that are covered include those that pertain to letter-sound correspondence, learning and using letter patterns and reading comprehension. These volunteer instructors are given the scripted lesson plans and a summary of their students’ assessment results. At the end of the training presentation, the instructors work in pairs to coordinate the sequence and delivery of the instruction. This cooperation is necessary due to the fact that each literacy instructor will attend one session per week. This initial training session is three hours in length.

Prior to the midpoint of the program, an additional training session is conducted. The purpose of this gathering is to train the instructors on the final writing lessons. This session follows a similar format in that the scripted writing lesson plans are distributed and explicitly modeled for the volunteers. The instructors then collaborate and plan the last four weeks of the program with their co-instructors. This final training session is approximately one hour in length. In sum, for their two formal training sessions the instructors have a total of four hours of training.

The program will run for two independent but identical courses. Each course will be 9 weeks. The first course for cohort one, will be at the beginning of the school year (October through December) and the second course for cohort two, will be in the middle of the school year (January through April). Within the second course there will be two recesses: reading week for the undergraduate instructors and March Break for the students. The first two sessions of the program are deemed as unstructured opportunities for the tutors and tutees to get to know each other. For the remaining 16 meetings, there is formal adherence to the lesson design framework and scripted plans. In sum, both cohorts one and two will have 18 sessions of 90 minutes or at total of 27 hours of programming.

The aforementioned 90-minute framework begins with 15 minutes of informal social time and snack with their literacy instructor. Following the snack, the students will receive approximately 30 minutes of instruction that is devoted to decoding. The primary grade students receive instruction that focuses on letter-sound knowledge whereas, the junior/intermediate students received instruction that focused on learning and using letter patterns. This phonics and decoding instruction is included for the full duration of the program. Therefore, for each of the 16 sessions, approximately 30 minutes is devoted to this instruction for a total of 8 instructional hours.

For the first 4 weeks, reading comprehension instruction is emphasized. Students in the primary and early junior grades read narrative stories and utilize and the "Predictive Story Frame" that integrates the strategies of prediction, story grammar and summarization. Students in the later junior and intermediate grades read expository articles and use the "C & C House" organizer that integrates the strategies of prediction and summarization for this genre of text. The tutees receive 30 minutes of reading comprehension per day for a total of 8 hours over the course of 4 weeks.

Then for the last 4 weeks, writing composition instruction is the focus. Since thirty minutes is devoted to writing composition instruction as well, then 8 hours of programming is the result. Using a mnemonic for the steps in the writing process "P.O.W.E.R.", the students in each tutoring group will collaboratively write a composition. The same graphic organizers that the students used in the comprehension lessons will be used as an organizer for their writing. The primary and junior grade students will write narrative stories, whereas, intermediate students will write a short expository composition.

Throughout the course of the program four qualitative methods will be used in this research: surveys, field notes, interviews, and documentary analysis. With the exception of pre-program surveys of the students’ teachers, the qualitative methods will be employed during the program and post-program.

Prior to the beginning of the program, each of the students’ classroom teachers will complete a confidential survey. This survey will ask the teacher to estimate and comment on a number of points with respect to their student: areas of academic strength and weakness, social skills, effective learning strategies, helpful resources, grade and level for decoding, oral reading, comprehension, writing organization, writing mechanics and grammar, and goals for the literacy program.

At the end of the program both the classroom teachers and the students’ parents will be surveyed. The classroom teachers will be asked the following open-ended questions: What do you feel your students gained from this program? Cite examples from the classroom. What are your impressions of explicit strategy instruction? How do you anticipate the experience from this program to be useful to your students in the future? What aspects worked well in this program? Why? What do you think we could do to make this program better? Why? If a colleague asked you about this program, what would you tell them? The teachers will have a week to complete the surveys before handing them in to the researcher.

The students’ parents will also be given an open-ended survey; however, this version is more succinct with less educational discourse. There are four questions: What do you feel your child gained from this program? Provide examples from what you have seen at home. What were your impressions of this after-school literacy program? What do you think we could do to make this program better? Why? If another parent asked you about this program, what would you tell them? This survey will be sent home with the students and the parents will be provided with a self-addressed stamped envelope to return the completed survey directly to the researcher.

For the duration of the present program, my role is one of a participant observer. In a pragmatic way, I am available to assist the Lynda and Susan in the operation of the program. I often make reference to the experiences that I had when I was the school-based coordinator of the pilot program. Additionally, I offer support for the volunteer instructors and clarify their queries about the lessons and their students. The instructors are aware of the fact that I have authored the lesson plans and assessed the students, thus, I am regarded as the source for additional information. This is the extent of my participation.

My duties as an observer pre-dominate my attendance at each of the tutoring sessions. Throughout the 90-minute session, I record the activities of the program. These anecdotal notes and observations are taken from adjacent tables in the library of the school. I position myself in such a way that I can hear and watch the activities that are going on at a few of the instructor’s tables. Approximately 10 minutes of observational time is devoted to each of the six groups of students. To ensure anonymity, participant code numbers have been assigned to the tutors and tutees.

At the end of the tutoring sessions I audiotape personal reflections on how the day’s session transpired. I provide impressions and opinions about the activities of the tutors and tutees. These will be conclusions that I will draw based on the more detailed and previously made field notes. These personal reflections will be transcribed.

Interview Data

The volunteer instructors will be interviewed on three occasions throughout the course of the program. Each private interview will be audiotaped for transcription. The researcher will conduct the interviews and each one will run 20-30 minutes in duration.

The first of the set of interviews will be completed after the initial instructor training and after the instructors have met their tutees. The pre-program interview questions are: Tell me about yourself. Why did you volunteer for this after-school literacy program? What do you anticipate to learn from this experience? What are your impressions about your assigned students? What do you anticipate that the students will learn from this program? What are your impressions of explicit strategy instruction? How do you feel about the training that you have been provided? Could you offer any suggestions to enhance this training?

Next, the second interview will be done at the midway point in the program. This will occur just after the second training session that focuses on the writing strands in the program. The mid-program interview questions are: Tell me about your experiences as an instructor. What are you learning from this experience? What have you come to learn about your assigned students? What are the students learning from this program? What are your impressions about the strategies for teaching writing? How do you feel about the training that you have been provided?

The third and final interview will take place after the last instructional session. This interview is completely open with a single leading question: Tell me what you think I should know about your experience as a volunteer instructor in this after-school literacy program. As the interviewer, I will ask supplementary questions to ensure that the volunteer has had an opportunity to comment on all aspects of their experience.

Documentary Data

Samples of the tutees’ work and the tutors’ evaluations of the program activities will be collected throughout the course of the program as documentary data. After each session, the tutors will complete a summary of the instructional resources used and assess how the students responded to the lessons. For each of the tenets of the program (letter-sound correspondence, learning/using letter patterns, reading comprehension and writing) the instructors will note the objectives of the lesson, the activities and materials employed and evaluate each of their students for effort, independence and comprehension of the lessons. The final portion of this evaluation will be designated for notes and recommendations for the next session. This is where the instructor can communicate ideas and tips to their co-instructor.

At the end of the program photocopies will be made of all of the student-completed products. This will include all of the Predictive Story Frames, C & C Houses, worksheets from Jolly Phonics, Word Detective books, brainstorming activities, writing organizers, rough composition drafts and final complete compositions. These documents will be retained in the students test files.

In September 2001 all 36 student participants (18 cohort one and 18 cohort two) were pre-tested. This initial battery measured students’ receptive vocabulary level, letter-sound correspondence, letter pattern awareness, written expression and independent, instructional and frustration reading levels. These data formed the basis of individual profiles for each of the students identifying their literacy strengths and weaknesses.

The first assessment was a "student in-take" interview, the purpose of which was to build rapport. The investigator scribed the students’ responses to such questions as, "What do you like to do at school?" ; "Who is your best friend?". Next, the students completed the Peabody Picture Vocabulary-Revised (Form L) (Dunn & Dunn, 1981) to ascertain their receptive vocabulary skill level. The students’ task was to select the picture considered to illustrate best the meaning of a stimulus word presented orally by the examiner. The internal consistency reliability coefficients ranged from .67 to .88 (median .80). For construct validity, the overall median value was .71, based on correlations with other vocabulary tests.

Students then completed selected sections from the Ekwall/Shanker Reading Inventory (ESRI) (Ekwall & Shanker, 2000). This inventory measures the total ranges of a students’ reading abilities from letter knowledge, phonics/word analysis, oral and silent reading levels, and listening comprehension. Ekwall and Shanker (2000) report that the reliability of the reading passages was calculated to be a coefficient of .82 on the oral reading passages and a correlation coefficient of .79 on the silent reading passages. As measures of letter-sound correspondence and word analysis, the Letter Knowledge and Phonics sub-tests of the ESRI were used. The San Diego Quick Assessment or Graded Word List (GWL) was also completed. This provided a grade level measure of the students’ ability to read a list of isolated words. Then the Reading Comprehension sub-test (Form A/B) of the ESRI was completed. This sub-test revealed the students’ independent, instructional and frustration level for silent, oral and listening comprehension. Additional questions were posed after each passage to evaluate the students’ knowledge of the elements of a narrative story (setting, characters, problem, events, and solution). For example, "Describe where the story takes place or the setting of the story"; "Who are all of the characters in the story?" Briefly describe the characters." In a similar fashion for the elements of expository text (introduction, thesis statement, sub-topics, conclusion), questions were posed such as: "What is discussed in the introduction of this passage?"; "What is the author’s thesis statement?".

Next, the Benchmark 120 Word List (Gaskins, 1996) was presented on flashcards and the students were required simply read the words. The students were given a raw score out of 120 and deficient words were highlighted for instruction during the program.

The students’ written expression was assessed using a picture prompt from the

Test of Written Language –2 (TOWL-2); (Hammill & Larsen, 1988). The TOWL-2 is a comprehensive test of a student’s writing ability including the conventional, linguistic and conceptual components of written language. The content reliability of the TOWL-2 has a coefficient of .95 and the criterion-related validity is reported to be indicative of a high relationship. For the current study, the sub-test for Thematic Maturity was scored according to the protocols of the TOWL-2. For this, the student writes a story in response to a stimulus picture and points are earned for inclusion of components that contribute to the story content. Students in Grades 1 to 5 received the directions for writing a narrative story and were respectively graded for this assignment. Students in Grades 6 to 8 received the directions for writing an expository piece and respectively graded for this assignment. An additional scoring scheme evaluated the content organization of the students’ writing sample. For example, students received credit for planning and/or organizing prior to writing. If students wrote a first draft and/or revised this draft they scored points. As well, students needed to include the key elements of a narrative (characters, setting, events, problem, solution) or expository piece (introduction, thesis statement, sub-topics, conclusion) to receive credit.

Post-test Learning Measures

Post-program assessments were completed on all 36 student participants (18 cohort one and 18 cohort two) within two weeks of the completion of the program in December 2001. Where available, alternate form of the pre-test measures were used for the post-test measures. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test – Revised (PPVT –R); (Form M) was administered as a post-test measure. This is a parallel form to the pre-test measure, Form L. The internal consistency reliability coefficients ranged from .61 to .86 (median .81). For the Reading Comprehension of the ESRI, Form C/D was used. This form includes additional reading passages at the same levels as Form A/B.

The Benchmark 120 Word List was again presented on flashcards and the students were required to read these words. In a similar fashion, 120 rhyming words were presented on flashcards. For example, the rhyming words, "test", "nut", and "say" were given to assess the transfer of the respective Benchmark 120 Words: "nest", "but", and "day". Then a second set of 120 rhyming words was contextualized in sentences. An example of a context sentence was, "The mad crab got stuck by the small brook." The underlined words are rhyming words for the respective Benchmark 120 Words: "had", "grab", "not", "truck", "my", "all", "look". The investigator compiled these two latter tests in an attempt to quantify transfer skills for sight vocabulary and in context.

For the post-test of the current study, the students wrote a story in response to a different stimulus picture (Form B) of the TOWL-2. This story was also assessed for Thematic Maturity according to the above protocols. The components that contribute to the story content and writing process were also measured with the same investigator devised marking scheme.

In April 2002, all 36 student participants will be post-tested for the final time. This will be a delayed post-test for cohort one students as they have not received programming since December 2001. This will be an immediate post-test for cohort two, as they will have just finished their program session.

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