A.C. Flora Media Center Newsletter
September 18th, 2015---------------Dr. Russ Conrath, NBCT
The A.C. Flora Media Center Book Club Meets For the First Time This School Year.
The Tyrants Daughter
I am Malala
Upcoming Club Goal
Another Fantastic Tool Found in DISCUS: Check It Out!
The CultureGrams Online Database combines affordability, unlimited printing rights, and anytime access to the World, Kids, States, and Provinces editions, photo and slideshow galleries, videos, interviews, recipes, famous people biographies, and graphs and tables. The engaging, colorful interface is fun and easy to navigate, whether users are reading reports, exploring maps and flags, or using the convenient search feature.
The A.C. Flora Media Center Book Club Information
Come to the media center and
check out the A.C. Flora high
school book club. By joining
the book club, you’ll find out
about places you’ve never
been and meet exciting characters
you’ll never find in movies
or a television show. You’ll
think of things you never
thought of before. Doors will
open that you never knew existed.
You’ll have the chance
to share what you find with
others and develop a deeper
appreciation for your classes.
Grades will improve, and you’ll
see the world in a new and
completely different way. It’s
the intellectual purchase of a
lifetime.
Dr. Conrath, NBCT
A.C. Flora's Librarian
Email: rconrath@richlandone.org
Website: http://flora.richlandone.org/group_profile_view.aspx?id=152ce834-3f71-4bea-9217-a615adc56d12
Location: 1 Falcon Drive, Columbia, SC, United States
Phone: 803-783-7300
Why Are Active Reading Programs Better Than Passive Reading Programs?
ABSTRACT
The purpose of the present study is to compare the reading achievement growth of eighth-grade students following a six-month period of participation in the Accelerated Reader program with the reading achievement growth of eighth-grade students with no participation in the Accelerated Reader program over the same six-month period.
Given the recent high stakes environment for student performance and teacher accountability in education, reading comprehension has become very important for the overall academic success for students. Many schools throughout the United States have attempted to improve reading comprehension with the use of supplemental reading programs (Grenawalt, 2004). The most popular reading program is Accelerated Reader (AR) (Nunnery, Ross, & McDonald, 2006). In order to determine if the use of the AR program impacts academic performance for reading comprehension, two schools that use the Measures of Academic Progress to measure reading growth are the focus of the present study. The AR school is represented by a school with an eighth grade consisting of 251 students and the non-AR control school, with no reading program, is represented by a school with an eighth grade consisting of 95 students. A pre-test/post-test group design is utilized in a causal comparative study. Student reading scores from the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test are compared from the fall and spring scores in the 2006-2007 school year utilizing a t-test. The data indicates that the non-AR school has better reading growth over a six-month period. In addition, t-tests are used to see if gender, ethnicity, or socio-economic status (SES), are influenced by natural reading comprehension growth without a supplemental reading program and with AR as a reading program. There is no significance for any of these subgroups; however, the data indicates that non-white students did better than whites at both schools. Initially, an Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) is planned to see if there are interactive effects for reading comprehension growth at the AR school and non-AR school. A Levene’s Test of Equality of Error Variance is run first to check for violations of assumptions and it finds that the ANCOVA model violates the assumption of equal variances. With the discovery of this error, an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) is run to examine interactive effects for school and race, and the data indicates that there are not any interactive effects for school or race between the two schools. Following the quantitative analyses, two faculty members at both schools are surveyed to gain insight about student reading habits at their respective schools. Results of the surveys at the non-AR school indicate that students are encouraged to read constantly, in class, independently, and with parents or guardians. Faculty at the non-AR school also state that there is constant emphasis placed on critical thinking skills in relation to reading. At the AR school, faculty indicate that student reading habits in relation to AR do seem to impact students checking out more books in the media center. With information gained from this research, educators and researchers may need to re-evaluate the ability of AR to consistently improve reading comprehension growth for eighth-grade students.
For a more in-depth review of AR versus a more progressive reading program, please find my dissertation here: https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Comparative_Study_for_the_Effects_of_a.html?id=WVWZnP_5HWAC