Silent and Oral Reading Comprehension Abilities of Second Grade Students Completing the Second S.T.E.P. Program

Abstract

This study focused on the silent and oral reading abilities of second grade students completing the Second S.T.E.P. Program. There were approximately seven second-grade students that participated. All 7 of the students are presently attending an elementary school located in western New York. The research questions concentrated on were: 1. Is there a statistically significant difference between the mean score of the pretest and the mean score of the posttest for unprompted memory, unprepared reading? 2. Is there a statistically significant difference between the mean score of the pretest and the mean score of the posttest for prompted memory, unprepared reading? 3. Is there a statistically significant difference between the mean score of the pretest and the mean score of the posttest for unprompted memory, prepared reading? 4. Is there a statistically significant difference between the mean score of the pretest and the mean score of the posttest for prompted memory, prepared reading? Each of the seven participants was administered in a one-on-one setting a pretest and a posttest version of the Bader Reading and Language Inventory in a 30-40 minute period. The pretest and the posttest each contained four sets of scores: unprompted memory (retelling), prompted memory (cued recall) after a unprepared (silent) reading and unprompted memory (retelling), prompted memory (cued recall) after a prepared (silent /oral) reading. The data were tallied and categorized into four sets of scores. Each set of scores was calculated utilizing a t-test of dependent means. The results of the t-test of dependent means indicated that there was no statistically significant difference between the mean pretest and mean posttest scores for all four sets of scores.