T HE BENEFITS OF S MALL G ROUP R EADING I NSTRUCTION ON ELL STUDENTS Ruth Carrion ED Midterm Presentation Fall 2010

T ABLE OF C ONTENTS Research Design Threats to Internal Validity Threats to External Validity Proposed Data Pre, Post- Test Results Proposed Data Analysis and Correlation References

R ESEARCH D ESIGN Research Design: Pre-Experimental Design One group: Symbolic Design: O X O o (O) Pre-test, (X) Treatment, (O) Post-test design o A single group of students at risk of reading failure will be pre-tested, exposed to treatment (small-group instruction), and post-tested. o Participants are not randomly assigned.

T HREATS TO I NTERNAL V ALIDITY History: Researcher may not be aware of participants learning behaviors that may affect learning in a small group. Maturation: Participants may grow tired of working in small groups for the 6 weeks of treatment. Participants may feel that the treatment is too easy for them and may become uninterested and will no longer want to pay attention. Testing/ Pre-Test Sensitization: Participants will be pre-tested and post-tested. The pre-test may affect the post-test. Instrumentation: There will be a pretest administered at the beginning of the study and posttest administered at the end of the six weeks through the school’s literacy assessment titled Reading 3D. Students’ progress will be observed through progress monitoring running records on the Reading 3D. Mortality: Participants may be removed from the class; students may move to another school, these factors do affect results. Differential Selection of Subjects: There will only be one group in this study. The participants will also be staying for extended day. Selection-Maturation Interaction: Participants may all mature at different levels and they may all have very different growth and improvement rates.

T HREATS TO E XTERNAL V ALIDITY o Generalizable Conditions: Incorporating small group instruction in our daily instruction can always has positive results. Pre-test Treatment: Participants may react differently to the treatment in a positive or negative way because they have been pre- tested. They may feel either excited about the treatment or bored with it. Selection- Treatment Interaction: Participants will be chosen if they are at a high risk of reading failure at the beginning of the school year. Participants are not chosen at random. Experimenter Effects: There may be threats such as favoritism, biases, and incorrect expectations about the progress of certain participants from the researchers behalf. Reactive Arrangements/ Participants Effects: Hawthorne Effect: Permission slip will be sent out about the research project. There may be parents who will tell their children about the project. This may cause participants to change their behavior and work harder to perform better on their reading tests.

P ROPOSED D ATA Pre and Post Tests Parents and Students Surveys Progress Monitoring

P RE -T EST / P OST -T EST R ESULTS Pre-Test Results and Projected Post-Test Results Student Numbers Reading Levels

P ROJECTED S URVEY R ESULTS / A NALYSIS There is a positive correlation between the hours spent reading with parents at home and reading level scores. Rxy: Reading Level Scores Hours Reading At Home

R EFERENCES O’Connor-Petruso, S. (2010). Descriptive Statistics & Threats to Internal and External Validity [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from %2fwebapps%2fblackboard%2fexecute%2flauncher%3ftype%3dCourse%26 id%3d_326533_1%26url%3d