Literacy groupings for reading success

This two-phased study looked at the effectiveness of ability grouping children for literacy instruction at a time when current literature has mixed reviews on the concept of grouping in this manner. The Phase One participants were kindergarten-level children and the Phase Two participants were Grade 1-level children. The students were assessed at the beginning and ending of each phase, the kindergarten-level students with the locally developed Reading Group Assessment and the Grade 1-level students with the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) assessment instrument. The DIBELS scores were compared to Prince George School District Grade One Norms. This comparison determined that the Grade 1-level students in this research made a statistically significant amount of improvement in Phoneme Segmentation Fluency and a smaller amount of improvement in Nonsense Word Fluency over their Prince George counterparts. Overall, student assessment scores indicated reading improvement. Results of this study allowed me to conclude that ability grouping children for literacy instruction was an effective strategy that should be repeated. --P. ii.