Teaching children with dyslexia to spell in a reading-writers’ workshop

To identify effective treatment for both the spelling and word decoding problems in dyslexia, 24 students with dyslexia in grades 4 to 9 were randomly assigned to treatments A (n?=?12) or B (n?=?12) in an after-school reading-writers’ workshop at the university (thirty 1-h sessions twice a week over 5 months). First, both groups received step 1 treatment of grapheme–phoneme correspondences (gpc) for oral reading. At step 2, treatment A received gpc training for both oral reading and spelling, and treatment B received gpc training for oral reading and phonological awareness. At step 3, treatment A received orthographic spelling strategy and rapid accelerated reading program (RAP) training, and treatment B continued step 2 training. At step 4, treatment A received morphological strategies and RAP training, and treatment B received orthographic spelling strategy training. Each treatment also had the same integrated reading–writing activities, which many school assignments require. Both groups improved significantly in automatic letter writing, spelling real words, compositional fluency, and oral reading (decoding) rate. Treatment A significantly outperformed treatment B in decoding rate after step 3 orthographic training, which in turn uniquely predicted spelling real words. Letter processing rate increased during step 3 RAP training and correlated significantly with two silent reading fluency measures. Adding orthographic strategies with “working memory in mind” to phonics helps students with dyslexia spell and read English words.     

Effects of communities of reflecting peers on student‐teacher development – including in‐depth case studies

Despite continuing interest in teacher reflection and an extensive body of research on peer assessment, the interaction between these areas has not been sufficiently investigated. This study on reflection and peer feedback is part of an ongoing action research addressing the design and pedagogical model of a theoretically oriented teacher training course. The course comprised face‐to‐face lessons followed by written reflections of the student‐teachers concerning their learning experiences. These reflections were presented for peer feedback – thereby initiating a community of reflecting peers (‘co‐reflection’) – and were additionally subjected to instructor feedback under two conditions (full vs. diluted). Student‐teachers’ perception of their professional development that resulted from these co‐reflecting communities were quantitatively evaluated (using a self‐reported questionnaire) over a three‐year period. An enhanced positive effect over the three‐year period was found – regardless of the instructor feedback condition – as well as significant differences between parallel groups (higher for science vs. mathematics student‐teachers). These are described in the first part of the paper, followed by an in‐depth case study analysis in the second section. The case studies reported inclusive analysis of the students’ written reflections and feedback. It provides an insight into the processes of co‐reflection, identifies changes over time in the quality of reflections and feedback, as well as in the personal, professional and social development of the student‐teachers, attempting to identify the mechanisms leading to these changes. Examples are cited to illustrate the ways in which the students developed and what activated their motivation for development. The case studies reveal two developmental models, one of external orientation and the other internal. These are characterized by a willing receiver and willing donor, respectively. The importance of a ‘maturity interval’, when the student is ‘ripe’ for developmental change, was also demonstrated. Offering an appropriate trigger at this mature point may stimulate crucial development. Teacher development is further interpreted in terms of interpersonal variables. The current paper may encourage teacher educators and student‐teachers themselves to incorporate co‐reflecting in their course planning and community planning. Ways may be designed to train student‐teachers to offer and use feedback effectively. For feedback to be valuable, it should be reinforcing, challenging, thorough and sincere, radiate faith, and be of a friendly nature – it should be non‐insulting and non‐judgemental. They may be used for in‐text as well as summary remarks.     

The effect of school entrance age on academic achievement and social-emotional adjustment of children: Follow-up study of fourth graders

One hundred and thirty-seven fourth-grade pupils participated in a follow-up study of the effect of school-entrance age on academic achievement and social-emotional functioning. The sample included 73 oldest pupils, born in the months of January to March, and 64 youngest pupils, born in October to December of the same calendar year. Results indicated that differences between the two groups in academic and social-emotional measures, found when the subjects were in first grade, persisted in part to the fourth grade. The youngest subjects continued to score lowest in mathematics and in oral and silent reading comprehension; they were slower readers; and they had higher trait anxiety scores. In addition, the differences between the groups in oral and silent reading comprehension performance were found to increase over the years.     

Reading improvement in English- and Hebrew-speaking children with reading difficulties after reading acceleration training

A reading acceleration program known to improve reading fluency in Hebrew-speaking adults was tested for its effect on children. Eighty-nine Hebrew- and English-speaking children with reading difficulties were divided into a waiting list group and two training groups (Hebrew and English) and underwent 4 weeks of reading acceleration training. Results of pre- and post-testing of reading abilities point to a significant main effect of the test, demonstrating improvements in silent contextual reading speed, reading comprehension, and speed of processing in both Hebrew and English training groups as compared to their performance before the intervention. This study indicates that the Reading Acceleration Program might be an effective program for improving reading abilities in children, independent of language.     

Metacognition in chemical education: question posing in the case-based computerized learning environment

Posing questions about an article might improve one’s knowledge—a cognitive function, or monitor one’s thought processes—a metacognitive function. This study focuses on guided question posing while using a metacognitive strategy by 12th grade honors chemistry students. We investigated the ways by which the metacognitive strategy affected students’ skills to pose complex questions and to analyze them according to a specially designed taxonomy. Our learning unit, Case-based computerized laboratories, emphasizes learning through chemical case studies, accompanied by tasks, that call for posing questions to which the answer cannot be found in the text. Teachers equipped their students with a metacognitive strategy for assessing the quality of their own questions and characterizing them according to a three-component taxonomy: content, thinking level, and chemistry understanding levels. The participants were 793 experimental and 138 comparison chemistry students. Research instruments included interviews and case-based-questionnaires. Interviews with students revealed that using the metacognitive strategy the students had been taught, they were capable of analyzing the questions they generated with the taxonomy. The questionnaires showed that students significantly improved their question posing skill, as well as the complexity level of the questions they posed. A significant difference was found in favor of the experimental group students. Stimulating students to generate complex questions with a metacognitive strategy in mind enabled them to be aware of their own cognitive process and to self-regulate it with respect to the learning task.     

The Universal and the unique in dyslexia: A cross-linguistic investigation of reading and reading fluency in Hebrew-and English-speaking children with reading disorders

Cross-linguistic studies provide a unique tool for the identification of universal processes in oral and written language, both in development and in breakdown (Annual Review of psychology, 52, 369–396). Examining the differential strengths and weaknesses of children with dyslexia in contrasting orthographies can help illumine both the more universal aspects of reading disabilities, as well as their individual language-specific attributes. The aim of this study, was to investigate the shared and distinctive characteristics of readers with dyslexia on reading and reading fluency across Hebrew and English orthographies. Differences between 60 Hebrew and English-speaking children with dyslexia on a battery of cognitive, linguistic, and reading measures will be discussed along with theoretical implications.     

Relative and absolute thinking in visual estimation processes

This study has two main goals: (1) to investigate the processes involved in visual estimation (part I of the study), and (2) to investigate the processes of judgment in visual estimation situations, which mostly involved proportional reasoning (part II). The study was conducted with 9-year old children in the third grade. Four strategies were expressed by the children in visual estimation situations. Exposure to a unit in the Agam project, designed to enhance visual estimation capabilities resulted in changes in the children's strategies. These changes reflected the processes by which children overcame their limited ability to process visual information. The development of proportional reasoning was investigated through a series of judgment situations. Although, as was expected, most of the children showed an additive behavior, these situations stimulated some children towards qualitative proportional reasoning, where easy/difficult considerations played an important role.     

论中小企业融资现状与对策

中小企业是我国经济发展的重要基础,根据我国当前的形势,借鉴国外的经验,我们必须采取必要的措施支持中小企业的发展.影响和制约中小企业发展的因素很多,但融资难是中小企业发展的重大难题.目前,我国中小企业既缺乏适合自身特点的直接融资方式,又受信贷政策的影响,比大企业更难从银行取得贷款.要解决中小企业融资难的问题,首先,政府要建立和完善中小企业融资服务体系,创建良好的有利于中小企业发展的社会环境;其次,要积极发展地方性金融机构。     

The Underlying Factors of Word Reading Rate

The discovery of the acceleration phenomenon and the contribution of reading rate as an independent variable to the quality of the reading process brought about a systematic research project that examined the underlying factors of word reading rate. Word reading requires processing information in the visual and auditory modalities and relies on word recognition skills such as phonological and orthographic decoding. Therefore, it is believed that speed of processing of some subset of the above sub-processes affects word-reading rate. By using experimental manipulations relying on both electrophysiological (ERPs) and behavioral measures, the sub-processes that are activated in word reading can be distinguished and shown to differentiate between the early perceptual, the central cognitive, and the motoric stages of activation. Results indicate that word reading rate is related to basic speed of processing in the modalities activated during the reading process. However, the processing level within each modality that contributes to self-paced and fast word reading rate differs according to age and the efficiency of reading skills.     

面向毕节地区农村中学化学教育的高师教育改革

从毕节农村中学教育的调查中,了解和分析当前农村化学教育与新课改所存在的众多矛盾,以新课程标准和提高毕节农村人力资源素质为前提,以及高师教育在中学化学教育中的地位和作用,阐述面向毕节地区农村教育的中学化学教师培养新机制和高师化学教育课程改革.