Topic 4: How Can Data-Based Instruction Help Me and My Students?

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Congratulations for making it this far! This topic is one that separates the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats, the serious scholars from the dilettantes.

Focus Questions for Topic 4

1. How can a teacher tell if his/her instructional strategy is beneficial to the learner?

2. Why would a teacher want to know?

As teachers who use data-based instruction, we are particularly interested in whether or not our teaching/learning interventions are actually resulting in increased benefits to my learners. Some of our methods of deciding include directly observing the students as they practice their new skills. Other methods include making inferences based on what our students write or say.

We'd like to take you through some examples of data-based instruction projects. The first one is one that Ann Nevin completed on behalf of a second grade student with learning disabilities. "Susie" was a typical 7 year old girl in most aspects of the second grade curriculum except reading, spelling and written expression. She consistently reversed her letters (e.g., b for d, w for m, q for p, and so on)--a classic example of a dyslexic learner.

Ann began her data-based instruction project by deciding what specific academic behavior she would focus on first: Susie's spelling. During her daily spelling tests, Susie was required to spell 10 words correctly. Ann collected Susie's daily tests, corrected them, and plotted her grades on a graph.

As you can see in Figure 1, her initial performance indicated that some days she did well and some days she did not. If you looked at her daily spelling tests, you would see immediately that the misspelled words were primarily due to letter reversals. However, she often correctly formed her letters--that is, sometimes she correctly formed a b instead of reversing it as a d. Ann concluded Susie already knew how to form the letters and so Ann decided to try a form of systematic feedback to increase her accuracy. If Ann's analysis of Susie's errors had indicated that she never formed her letters correctly, Ann would have had to go to a letter-formation shaping procedure.

During the next few days, Ann decided to correct Susie's work while she was completing her spelling test. Twice during the spelling test, Ann stopped by her desk and placed a "big red C" for correct by each letter/word she had correctly spelled--each letter she had correctly formed. Ann continued to graph the measures of her accuracy.

As you can see in Figure 2, Susie noticeably improved on her spelling tests! Ann wanted to see whether the "extra work" of providing feedback to Susie during her spelling test was really necessary. So for the next few days, she stopped providing immediate feedback. Susie's performance was altered rather dramatically as you can see in Figure 3. 

 With this verification that the immediate correction was "worth" the extra effort, Ann continued to provide immediate feedback to Susie with the happy result that her spelling tests continued to show improvement. As she gained confidence in her new-found competence, Ann systematically removed her immediate correction until Susie's was working independently.

Ann's next steps were to look for generalization of Susie's competence to other forms of written expression (such as her essays and stories). Ann began to track her oral reading errors to see if her letter reversals were decreasing in that area as well. ***

Toni Hood's example focuses on Zoe, an eight year old girl with Down Syndrome and mild cerebral palsy which affected the range of motion and strength of her right arm. Zoe's friendly outgoing personality was a factor in her successful integration in a regular classroom. Toni started her data-based instruction project by assessing Zoe's ability to recognize key environmental print as part of her life skills development. Toni collected baseline data on Zoe's ability to read aloud from a given written list of familiar words in her environment.  Such words included her name, and names of members of her family, the names of her town, school, teacher, a few friends, and such words as /girls/, /boys/, /lunch/, and names of local stores and commercial products which were visited or used by Zoe and her family.  The latter list included Jack-in-the-Box, Von's, Lucky's, Pepsi, Coke, Cheerios, Oreos, and M&M's.  Twenty-five words were listed.

 
As you can see from Figure 1, Zoe was only able to recognize her own first name when shown in the randomly ordered list of words.  Two distinct approaches were used in this pre intervention informal assessment.  The first called for Toni, the examiner, to ask Zoe to find the given words.  For example, Toni would say: Zoe, point to "Pepsi."  The results of Approach #1 were the same as the results for Approach #2, when Toni asked her to tell the word that Toni was pointing to.

During the week that followed, Toni embarked on a mission to create a language-rich environment for Zoe in the area of the resource room in which she worked.  We called her work area "Zoe's Office", and we labeled everything in it.  We included teacher-made books of captioned photographs of Zoe and persons known to her.  During each instructional session with her, she was directed to look at and read the labels she saw. Integrated into her 'office' were several activities which reinforced her potential acquisition of sight vocabulary. Cards were made that corresponded with the labels, a bingo game using the words was part of her daily routine, and books which included those same words read with her frequently.

The graph in Figure 1 demonstrates Zoe's gradual acquisition of specific sight words during the first month of intervention.

A second measure was made of Zoe's ability to state the names or sounds (either response was accepted as accurate) of the randomly ordered lowercase alphabet when presented to her using flash cards.

As indicated in Figure 2, Zoe consistently named or gave the sounds for the letters /o/, /l/, /i/, /z/, /o/, /x/, and /e/.  When presented the letter /k/, Zoe said "Kimmie" with great enthusiasm.  (Kimmie is one of her siblings.)  Figure 2 shows result of this assessment for two separate sessions with Zoe, as her attention span is quite short.  Toni concluded that Zoe had had frequently repeated instruction during her first two years in school with letter recognition and name writing, and she had internalized the ability to name the letters listed above.

Zoe had an outgoing personality who had always been included in whole class and small group instruction in the mainstream.  It was therefore quite easy to integrate her into small groups of students in language arts sessions held in the Resource Room.  Toni introduced her into a group of first and second grade resource students who were working on the multisensory phonics program called Zoophonics (Copyrighted by Zoophonics, Inc., 1987, Box 1219 Groveland, CA 95321).  The instructional strategies used within this program to help children learn the letter sounds incorporate visual-auditory-kinesthetic-tactile sensory stimulation through body movement, rhythm, music, and colorful cards and posters with animals superimposed on lowercase letters. 
Zoe's enthusiasm was very high, and within two weeks of daily Zoophonics session, Zoe was able to mimic the movement and sound associated with 14 letters, which was twice her pre intervention amount. By the end of two months, Zoe could act out, sing the verse, and say the sounds for 21 letters.  The six letters that eluded her were: /f/, /h/, /q/, /w/, /y/.    Figure 2 shows this progress.  Following a two-day weekend and a three-day absence, Zoe was unable to name the same number of letters as before.  Her recognition dropped to 13 letters.  However, when the procedure was reinstituted, Zoe's recognition again increased. ***

Now it's your turn to make data-based decisions! Here are three examples showing measures of students' performance under three different instructional interventions. You have to decide whether or not to continue the instructional intervention or to change to another strategy. What are Your Answers to these data-based decisions and the Focus Questions for Topic 4?  Please complete your answers to the Focus Questions.  When you are ready, you may want to compare your answers to what other teachers say. What Do Other Teachers Say?

Key Thought The Sky's the Limit!

Are you familiar with the "Pygmalion Effect?" This is the phenomenon known as the "self-fulfilling prophecy." When teachers have high expectations of their learners, high performance is more likely to occur! When teachers have low expectations, low performance is more likely to occur. In fact, having high expectations is one of the researched "best practices" that has been documented by both general and special education researchers as having a positive effect on learners with special needs. Believing that "The Sky is the Limit" is a signal that you have high expectations. It is a symbol of what you can expect as you use data-based instruction. It is possible for you to help those learners who are difficult-to-teach to achieve new unexpected heights of achievement.

You are now ready to complete Part 4 of your Data-Based Instruction Project

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