Preschool environments can be critical to academic success and risk reduction but disruptive behaviors can have significant and lasting negative effects on students as well as teachers. These behaviors may be pervasive in some classrooms and effective interventions are needed. A combined delayed multiple baseline and withdrawal design across a teacher's two classrooms (a.m. and p.m.) was used to monitor the effectiveness of an interdependent group contingency procedure used during circle time, a key learning activity. Results from the morning and afternoon half-day classrooms led by the lead teacher generally indicated that the intervention was effective at decreasing student disruptions. In addition, outcomes demonstrated increased student engagement and improvements in more positive teacher attention compared with negative attention. Teacher-directed instruction, on average, increased in the morning classroom during intervention conditions and remained high across conditions in the afternoon classroom.
Using an adapted alternating treatments design, this study compared the effects of two intervention conditions on the reading fluency, comprehension, and comprehension rate of six high-school students reading below grade level. Students were repeatedly exposed to repeated reading (RR), repeated reading and vocabulary previewing (RR + VP), and no intervention control conditions. Dependent variables were assessed at the end of experimental sessions by using practiced passages. Both interventions had positive effects on reading performance as compared to the control condition. Results indicated that the RR + VP condition led to the greatest improvements in reading fluency for all participants. The RR + VP condition led to the highest reading comprehension levels for three participants, and the RR + VP and RR conditions resulted in similar comprehension levels for the other three participants. For five participants, reading comprehension rate was greatest under the RR + VP condition. Discussion focuses on future directions for research on reading interventions for high-school students. C 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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