Date of Award:

12-2008

Document Type:

Dissertation

Degree Name:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department:

School of Teacher Education and Leadership

Department name when degree awarded

Elementary Education

Committee Chair(s)

D. Ray Reutzel (Committee Co-Chair), Sylvia Read (Committee Co-Chair)

Committee

D. Ray Reutzel

Committee

Sylvia Read

Committee

Jamison D. Fargo

Committee

Parker C. Fawson

Committee

John A. Smith

Abstract

This study focused upon the established importance of the reading-writing relationship and its posited effect on literacy development. A repeated-measures experimental design investigated the effects of interactive writing instruction on 151 kindergarten students’ acquisition of early reading skills. Multilevel modeling was used to evaluate the impact of the reading-writing relationship as operationalized with interactive writing and writing workshop on the acquisition of early reading skills as repeated outcome measures at four points in time (Level 1) were clustered within students (Level 2). Results of this study indicated that instruction grounded in the reading-writing relationship, namely, interactive writing and writers’ workshop combined with existing reading instruction, led to equal growth in kindergarteners’ acquisition of early reading skills for each of the outcome measures at each of the four time points assessed. The growth effects obtained from the use of the reading-writing instructional treatments used in this study compared with the national normative samples from the outcome measures indicated that the reading-writing instruction significantly increased the rate of growth for the early reading skills of phonemic awareness, alphabet knowledge, and word reading.

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3d46c07d3ad9d8dc62e80187d7844439

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