2023 Sidney W. & Janet R Bijou Grant: Kristen Newell

Kristen Newell is a doctoral student at Louisiana State University studying under the mentorship of Dr. Jeanne Donaldson. Before starting her doctoral program, she earned her MS in Applied Behavior Analysis from Florida State University. Kristen’s current research, designed in collaboration with Dr. Scott Ardoin, focuses on the role of reading interventions in classroom engagement and assessing student preference for the interventions they experience. The Bijou Grant will support her research examining how the timing of a repeated reading intervention, as either preparation for (pre-teaching) or review of reading material, affects active student responding (ASR) when reading in front of peers.
According to the National Assessment for Educational Progress, only 33% of fourth-grade students read at or above proficiency in 2022. Students who are at risk of reading failure may be less likely to volunteer to read in front of their peers, despite practice being critical for improving reading skills. For these students, implementing interventions designed to increase both class engagement and strengthen specific academic skills may be beneficial. Repeated reading is a reading intervention shown to increase overall fluency and comprehension of reading passages (Begeny et al., 2009). Repeated reading can be used as either a pre-teaching or review strategy to increase fluency and comprehension, but the timing of when the intervention is received may affect students’ willingness to read in front of their peers.
Kristen’s study will examine how the timing of a repeated reading intervention, as either pre-teaching or review of reading material, affects ASR during a small group. Additionally, the study will assess the timing of repeated reading on the number of sessions required to reach the oral reading fluency mastery criterion during intervention sessions. Lastly, the study will investigate student preference for repeated reading as an intervention and when it is delivered. Pre-teaching and review may both be effective strategies to increase students’ success in the classroom by providing students with additional interaction with the content; however, to our knowledge, no studies have compared the effects of the timing of when students experience the additional content relative to classroom instruction. Results from this study may allow practitioners to make informed decisions on how the timing of a reading intervention impacts students’ willingness to engage in class.