KINDERGARTEN FINE MOTOR SKILLS AND EXECUTIVE FUNCTION: TWO NON-ACADEMIC PREDICTORS OF ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT Abby G. Carlson, Ph.D. George Mason University, 2013 Dissertation Director: Dr. Timothy W. Curby Recent research has found that children’s fine motor skills and executive function prior to elementary school are associated with later academic achievement. The current study explored this ass...

This study examined the effect of improvements in timing/rhythmicity on students’ reading achievement. 86 participants completed preand post-test measures of reading achievement (i.e., Woodcock-Johnson III, Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing, Test of Word Reading Efficiency, and Test of Silent Word Reading Fluency). Students in the experimental group completed a 4-week intervention d...

The authors used a large sample of children (N ≈ 7,400) participating in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study--Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) to estimate kindergarten children's academic achievement growth trajectories in reading and mathematics. The authors were particularly interested in whether the growth trajectories of children with learning disabilities (LD) or speech language impairments...

Reading comprehension growth trajectories from third to seventh grade were estimated for 99,919 students on a state reading comprehension assessment. We examined whether differences between students in general education (GE) and groups of students identified as exceptional learners were best characterized as stable, widening, or narrowing. The groups included students with disabilities (SWD) fr...

In this study, a curriculum-based measurement (CBM) of reading aloud from narrative passages was used to predict performance on statewide achievement tests in reading and math. Scores on multiple-choice reading and math achievement tests were moderately correlated with scores on rate measures during the same year and rate measures administered 1 year previously. The results provide initial supp...

Effective reading instruction plays an important role in improving students’ outcomes in reading achievement. This paper is designed to serve as a tutorial for translating the simple view of reading model into classroom practices for improving early reading instruction. This model is used as a framework for facilitating teachers’ word study knowledge for instructing both typically developing re...

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of using Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) on the learners’ achievement in L2 grammar and reading in an EFL context and to further  investigate  whether  the  students’  classroom  performances  would  predict  their  final exam  results.  To  conduct  this  study,  two  classes,  each  containing  30  female  students,  were selected  among ...

Background. The association between poorer academic outcomes and having antisocial friends is reliably demonstrated yet not well understood. Genetically sensitive designs uniquely allow for measuring the areas of genetic vulnerabilities and/or environmental risk in the association of antisocial friend behavior and poor school achievement, allowing for a better understanding of the nature of the...