Implementation of the guided reading approach with elementary school deaf students

The researchers investigated the effects of the Guided Reading approach (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996) on the reading development of elementary school deaf students over a period of 2 school years. A single-subject experimental research designed was used. Qualitative analyses of observations of instruction and interviews with the teachers were conducted to determine fidelity to the Guided Reading protocol. Visual display of graphed Running Records scores during the 2-year implementation showed that all students improved during intervention, all participants except the oldest group experienced a drop in scores from the end of one school year to the beginning of the next, and that it took months for most students to regain their previous year's scores; some had not done so even by the end of fall term.