Morphological Awareness Dynamic Assessment Task in Third Grade Children: A Feasibility Study

Author

Katherine Pike, Utah State University

Date of Award

5-7-2011

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science (BS)

Department

Communicative Disorders and Deaf Education

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine whether a) a morphological awareness dynamic assessment task is a sensitive instrument and reveals a range of performance in third grade children, and b) performance on a morphological awareness dynamic assessment task may be significantly improved with dynamic scaffolding.

Method: The participants included twenty-three typically developing third-grade children from an elementary school in the Intermountain West. The morphological awareness dynamic assessment task, adapted from Larsen and Nippold (2007), was administered to each child two times (Initial Trial 1 testing and a subsequent Trial 2 testing 3 days later). This task required children to use their knowledge of familiar base words and suffixes to infer meanings of uncommon, morphologically complex words. The 16 stimulus items were administered with a series of increasingly helpful scaffolds to help facilitate morphological awareness knowledge.

Results: Results revealed a wide range of test performance for children with large standard deviations. A within subject paired sample t-test revealed a statistically significant improvement in scores between Trial 1 and 2 of the morphological awareness dynamic assessment task with 87% of participants demonstrating a positive change or perhaps learning secondary to scaffolds.

Implications: The findings of this study indicate that dynamic assessment may be used as a sensitive test to discriminate a range of performance and may provide treatment insights for individuals with and without literacy deficits.

Comments

This work made publicly available electronically on September 20, 2011.

Recommended Citation

Pike, Katherine, "Morphological Awareness Dynamic Assessment Task in Third Grade Children: A Feasibility Study" (2011). Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects. 90.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/honors/90