Investigating the Impact of Technology Use on Oral Reading Fluency Growth
Results
On the pretest, the class average was 110 WPM with 98% accuracy. This average was above the end of year 2nd grade benchmark, however, with the level of performance at the school, this is was what teachers typically see at that point in the school year. Of the 19 participants, only four students started below the WPM benchmark. The benchmark of 89 WPM is the expectation for the 50th percentile of students. At the beginning of the study, all but four participants were at or above that benchmark; eight students started off in the 75th percentile and two students were in the 90th percentile or above.
At the end of the nine weeks, the class average grew to 137 WPM with 99% accuracy.. All but one participant reached the WPM goal of 89 words; the one student who did not had a score of 79 WPM with a growth of 24 WPM from the beginning of the study to the end. While this student did not reach the benchmark, adequate growth was shown. The expected WPM growth for a 2nd grader is 1.2 words per week, so the anticipated growth over a nine-week study would be about eleven words. All but one student grew by eleven or more WPM with the class average growth of 27 WPM. Overall, eleven students ended in the 90th percentile or above and seven students reached the benchmark range for the 50th percentile; the one student who was below the WPM benchmark was within the range by 10 words per minute.
Future Impact
Since students showed significant growth, Flipgrid can be considered a useful strategy for fluency practice. For the upcoming school year, I plan to continue to use Flipgrid.com for fluency practice as well as finding new ways to incorporate videos and student voice into learning and assessments.
Future studies on the use of Flipgrid should include: Random assignment as the sample selection method, a control group to account for extraneous variables, investigation of frequency and amount of recordings related to growth, prosody measurements to look for reading expression growth, and possibly a qualitative study to look at reading motivation in relation to Flipgrid use.
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