Reading-Racetracks and Self-Graphing on Literacy Performance of Struggling Students With Behavioral Problems

Journal of Educational Research & Practice 2023, Volume 13, Issue 1, Pages 307–328 DOI: 10.5590/JERAP.2023.13.1.21 © The Author(s) Original Research Effects of Reading Racetracks and Self-Graphing on Literacy Performance of Struggling Students With Behavioral Problems Anne Barwasser, PhD University of Cologne, Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8124-6429 Kerstin Nobel, PhD University of Cologne, Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany Matthias Grünke, PhD University of Cologne, Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4249-6035 Contact: Abstract Literacy influences all aspects of life. Unfortunately, a rising number of students struggle with reading and spelling, which can result in enormous educational barriers. Difficulties in literacy accompanied by learning-related problem behavior can create additional risk factors. Effective interventions for these students should consider individual needs and focus on multiple components of learning simultaneously. The present single-case study focused on the effects of motivational reading racetracks, with and without self-graphing, on the word-reading and spelling performance of three third graders with severe literacy and behavior problems. Our intervention was carried out three times a week over a 5-week period. The results show strong effects of the racetracks on reading, while the self-graphing component did not seem to be an additional booster. Regarding spelling, the ability to read words was not equivalent to being able to spell all words correctly. However, effects were found when self-graphing was added. In sum, the data suggest that, while it was effective to practice reading using racetracks without motivational reinforcers, it was not sufficient to merely practice spelling. Nevertheless, self-graphing had a positive effect on spelling when attention was focused on spelling the words correctly. Keywords: peer-reading racetracks, self-graphing, word reading, word spelling, behavioral difficulties Date Submitted: August 10, 2022 | Date Published: July 26, 2023 Recommended Citation Barwasser, A., Nobel, K., & Grünke, M. (2023). Reading-Racetracks and self-graphing on literacy performance of struggling students with behavioral problems. Journal of Educational Research and Practice, 13, 307–328. https://doi.org/10.5590/JERAP.2023.13.1.21 Barwasser et al., 2023 Introduction and Literature Review Literacy—Reading and Spelling Literacy plays a central role in school curricula. Whether for assessments, written assignments, or mathematical problem-solving, adequate reading and spelling skills lay the groundwork for academic success (Reid & Lienemann, 2013). As a result, students with persisting difficulties in reading and/or spelling experience greater challenges in all content areas than their normally achieving peers (Verduin & McLaughlin, 2012). It is estimated that 74% of all children who are diagnosed with a reading disability by third grade will continue to manifest severe problems in decoding symbols to determine a text’s meaning in later life (Shaywitz et al., 1994). Specifically, Kiuru (2011) found that students with spelling difficulties are less likely to attend and graduate from secondary education. Against this backdrop, it is significant that about 19% of fourth graders in Germany and 17% of fourth graders in the United States do not read at a proficient level (Hußmann et al., 2017). While reading and spelling are strongly associated (Furnes & Samuelsson, 2011; Georgiou et al., 2012; Landerl & Wimmer, 2008), learning to spell is generally more difficult than learning to read (Bosman & Van Orden, 1997). This is especially true for languages with relatively inconsistent letter-sound correspondence, such as English (Gangl et al., 2018). The present study was conducted in Germany. In German, the pronunciation of words is more predictable than in English, based on their written form. This makes spelling easier. However, spelling still poses a significant challenge to students and, as mentioned earlier, is usually more difficult to acquire than reading (Wimmer & Mayringer, 2002). According to the dual route theory (DRT), when reading aloud, skilled readers use both a system of rules that connect letter-sound relations and sight words stored in memory (Coltheart et al., 1993). Sight words are stored as a unit in memory and are recognized and read automatically. Ehri’s theory of sight-word reading is based on the connection between the spelling of a word and its pronunciation as stored in one’s memory. That is, the “sight” of a familiar word activates affiliated information like pronunciation, meaning, and spelling (Ehri, 2005). Several experiments that included sight word reading have demonstrated that four or fewer exposures to targeted pseudo-words were sufficient for students to be able to read those words more fluently and to retain information about the words’ spelling in memory (Share, 2004). In that connection, Share (2004) emphasized the importance of saying the word versus just seeing the word. Once children operate fully alphabetically (Ehri, 2005) and are familiar with letter-sound correspondences, they can quickly retrieve sight words from memory. Through repeated encounters with sight words, students will also be able to recognize and store multiletter units that were present in different words. Because these readers have to connect fewer units when decoding new words, their word-identification skills improve (Pikulski & Chard, 2005). Students in the upper elementary grades are at a critical phase in their reading development, as the prominent goal in reading shifts from learning to read to reading to learn from texts with increasing complexity and information density (Toste et al., 2017). Students with reading difficulties, who have less access to sight words, have to resort to the non-lexical route more often (Ardoin et al., 2013), and the additional cognitive load that stems from slowed word processing is likely to have a negative impact on comprehension (Stevens et al., 2017). Students With Behavioral Difficulties and How to Support Their Reading and Spelling One group of students who consistently struggle with literacy tasks is children with emotional behavior disorders (EBD; Roberts et al., 2020). Many studies have established a relationship between EBD and Journal of Educational Research and Practice 308 Barwasser et al., 2023 severe problems in reading and spelling (e.g., Horbach et al., 2020; Martin et al., 2006; Metsäpelto et al., 2017; Walters, 2016). Having to attend to both problems simultaneously poses great challenges for teachers, especially because students with EBD are less likely to respond to traditional literacy interventions (Jacobson et al., 2013). However, meta-analyses by Roberts et al. (2020) and Rivera et al. (2006) indicate that explicit reading instruction, as well as peer tutoring, can be very helpfu (...truncated)