1. This study seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of My Breakfast Reading Program in reducing the number of children at-risk for reading difficulty. 1st grade students who were identified as “at-risk” for reading difficulties were given 15 minutes of the intervention 4 days a week. Results indicate that My Breakfast Reading Program is effective in reducing the number of children at-risk for reading difficulties when measuring individuals’ phonics skills. Abstract Effects of My Breakfast Reading Program On Reducing The Number of Children At-Risk for Reading Difficulties Rachel M. Miller, Allison E. Whitney, Gwen Badgerow, Gary Cates Illinois State University Introduction The Big Five Areas of Reading  Researchers have identified five general areas of literacy skill that seem to be important for the development of reading ability. The “Five Big Ideas in Beginning Reading” include:  Phonemic awareness: the ability to manipulate individual and groups of sounds within a word.  Alphabetic principle: the ability to correspond sounds with letters. This encompasses many specific skills such as identifying individual letters, decoding words, and sight word reading.  Fluency with text: the ability to automatically read words. Fluent readers are not only accurate, but are also fast at decoding and sight word reading.  Vocabulary refers to the ability to understand the meaning of words. (Chard, Coyne, Edwards, Good., Harn, & Kame’enui, 2004).  My Breakfast Reading Program (MBRP) is a reading intervention that focuses primarily on the alphabetic principle and fluency. The alphabetic principal is targeted through exercises designed to improve letter naming fluency, phonics, and sight word reading. Fluency is targeted through passage reading. Precision Teaching  Precision Teaching is a technique designed to accompany other interventions, curricula, or teaching strategies, such as Direct Instruction, to increase the efficiency of student learning (accuracy and fluency) (Kubina et. al, 2002).  Precision Teaching evaluates the efficacy of interventions, curricula, and/or teaching strategies by measuring student progress and subsequently uses this information to make data-based decisions (Chapman et. al, 2005). My Breakfast Reading Program My Breakfast Reading Program (www.mybreakfastreadingprogram.com) is a free reading program that focuses primarily on the alphabetic principle and fluency. The alphabetic principal is targeted through exercises designed to improve letter naming fluency, phonics, and sight word reading. Fluency is targeted through passage reading. It is based on concepts from precision teaching. Procedure Measures Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF) Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) (www.dibels.uoregon.edu) Procedure  Participants were identified based on their NWF and ORF benchmarking scores in the fall of 1st grade.  Participants received 15 minutes of My Breakfast Reading Program individual intervention 4 days a week for the entire school year.  Participants’ scores on NWF and ORF was recorded during the fall of 1st grade, winter of 1st grade, spring of 1st grade, and fall of 2nd grade.  Difference scores were derived based on a score’s distance away from benchmarking goals. ResultsParticipants  26 students in 1st grade  12 boys (46.2%) and 14 girls (53.8%)  Recruited from two small, rural elementary schools in Illinois ResultsDiscussion  These results suggest that My Breakfast Reading Program is effective in reducing student’s risk for reading difficulties based on NWF benchmarking scores.  It appears that My Breakfast Reading Program is effective in improving students’ phonics skills. Limitations & Future Research  Participants did not show an improvement in ORF discrepancy scores. This implies that My Breakfast Reading Program may not be effective in reducing students’ risks for reading difficulties across reading skills. Future research should evaluate students’ reading performance with other measures that span across reading skills.  This study had a relatively small sample size (26 students). Therefore, future research should include larger samples.  Participants began receiving intervention during the fall of 1st grade. ORF benchmarking measures are typically not administered until the winter benchmarking session. Therefore it is unknown if participants’ fluency improved from the fall to winter. Future research should include reading fluency measures at the onset of intervention. References Chapman, S.S., Ewing, C.B., & Mozzoni, M. (2005). Precision teaching and fluency training across cognitive, physical, and academic tasks in children with traumatic brain injury: A multiple baseline study. Behavioral Interventions, 37-49. Chard, D., Coyne, M., Edwards, L., Good, R., Harn, B., and Kame’enui, E. (2004). Big ideas in reading. Retrieved January 20, 2008 from BIG IDEAS in Beginning Reading Web site: http://reading.uoregon.edu/big_ideas/trial_bi_index.php. Kubina, R.M., Morrison, R. & Lee, D.L. (2002) Benefits of adding precision teaching to behavioral interventions for students with autism. Behavioral Interventions, 233-246.  Discrepancy scores were derived by subtracting the “Some Risk” benchmarking cutoff scores from each participant’s benchmarking scores. This score represents how far discrepant an individual’s score is from national norms.  Paired Samples T-Tests were conducted on students’ discrepancy scores for ORF and NWF across 1st grade benchmark and 2nd grade fall benchmark scores.  Participants’ NWF discrepancy scores showed a significant improvement from fall (M = 6.42, SD = 13.85) to winter (M = 23.62, SD = 12.23, t(23) = -3.95, p =.001) and fall (M = 6.52, SD = 14.15) to spring (M = 20.78, SD = 15.52, t(22) = -3.09, p =.005).  Participants’ change in ORF discrepancy scores were not significant across benchmarking periods. ORF Discrepancy Scores Paired T-Test NWF Discrepancy Scores Paired T-Test