Sight Vocabulary and Computers: the Effect of Stories Written in the Program PowerPoint on the Acquisition of Sight Vocabulary in First Grade Students

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of using fifth grade students' stories presented in a PowerPoint format as a tool for developing sight vocabulary for first graders. The subjects were two heterogeneously grouped classes, a first grade and fifth grade class, from a suburban upstate school district in New York. There were twenty first graders who served as both treatment group A and treatment group B. The fifth grade students served as the cross-aged tutors that helped the first graders as they read. Pretests of sight words were administered before the first grade students read the stories in printed format or PowerPoint format. The class was divided so that ten read one form of the story and ten read the other. After three readings of the story a posttest was administered. The groups then switched and the study was repeated. The mean scores were then compared. The statistical analysis indicated that there was not a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the two treatments. The analysis also indicated that there was not a statistically significant difference between the pretest and the posttest scores for both treatments.