Joint Predictive Probabilities of Oral Reading Fluency for Reading Comprehension

1. Joint Predictive Probabilities of Oral Reading Fluency for Reading Comprehension Young-Suk Kim & Yaacov Petscher Florida State University & Florida Center for Reading Research BACKGROUND RESULTS Oral reading fluency has been shown to have a strong relationship with reading comprehension, particularly for primary grade students (e.g., Fuchs, Fuchs, Hosp, & Jenkins, 2001; Kuhn & Stahl, 2003). Thus, oral reading fluency measures have been used widely as a tool to identify students at risk for reading difficulty and in need of intervention, and to monitor their progress. However, the concrete link between students’ performance on oral reading fluency and reading comprehension is not clear despite the fact that many teachers, those in Reading First schools in particular, are expected to utilize information about students’ text reading fluency in their literacy instruction. The present study investigated probabilities of success in reading comprehension as a function of students’ performance on oral reading fluency in grades one to three. In particular, we examined the predictive utility of oral reading fluency in the fall and winter for reading comprehension achievement at the end of the year for grades one to three. Research Question 1 Students’ fall ORF was not predictive of reading comprehension in grade one due to a floor effect whereas both fall and winter performance for grades two and three predicted reading comprehension at the end of the year. Joint probabilities are displayed below. Joint probabilities for grade 2 RESEARCHQUESTIONS 1. Do students’ performance on oral reading fluency (ORF) in the fall and winter predict their reading comprehension achievement at the end of the year for students in grades one to three? If so, what are joint probabilities of fall and winter ORF for year-end reading comprehension? 2. Does information about students’ winter ORF provide added information for predicting students’ year-end reading comprehension performance? Joint probabilities for grade 3 Area under the curve Grade 2Grade 3 A1 .810 .831 A2 .819 .831 A1 & A2 .821 .839 PARTICIPANTS & MEASURES Participants A sample of 23,228 students from Florida’s Reading First population were drawn from the Progress Monitoring and Reporting Network (PMRN) that is maintained by the state of Florida. Oral Reading Fluency: DIBELS (5th edition; Good, Kaminski, Smith, Laimon, & Dill, 2001). The child is asked to read three grade-level passages aloud for one minute and the number of words accurately read in one minute is calculated. In accordance with the DIBELS guideline, the median score from the three passages was used as the final score. DIBELS ORF was administered four times a year. Reading Comprehension: The Stanford Achievement Test (10th edition, SAT-10, Harcourt Brace, 2003). SAT-10 is a nationally normed test and includes several passages followed by multiple choice items that assess students’ initial understanding, interpretation, critical analysis, and awareness and usage of reading strategies after reading literary, informational, and functional text passages. The SAT-10 was administered at the end of each year from grades one to three. CONCLUSION • In grade one, fall ORF performance did not reliably predict end-of-year reading comprehension. • In grades two and three, students’ performance in the fall and winter significantly predicted their later reading comprehension risk. • Although students’ performance on ORF at the beginning of year provides large amount of information about later reading comprehension achievement, additional information is gained from winter ORF performance, increasing precision in prediction. Research Question 2 Winter ORF information added unique variance to year-end reading comprehension in grades two and three, albeit small amount. -2LL Pseudo R2 χ2 Grade 2 Fall 14523.57 .257 Fall & Winter 14453.50 .278 70.07 (df =1), p < .001 Grade 3 Fall 14702.29 .305 Fall & Winter 14640.51 .322 61.78 (df =1), p < .001 SELECTED REFERENCES Fuchs, L. S., Fuchs, D., Hosp, M. K., & Jenkins, J. R. (2001). Oral Reading Fluency as an indicator of reading competence: A theoretical, empirical, and historical analysis. Scientific Studies of Reading, 5, 239-256. Kuhn, M. R., & Stahl, S. A. (2002). Fluency: A review of developmental and remedial practices. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95, 3-21. Poster presentation at the Pacific Coast Research Conference, February 6, 2009, San Diego, California. Direct correspondence to: Young-Suk Kim at ykim@fcrr.org.