Planning an Experiment Essay
The development of the new reading program, E-Z-Read is very effective but the program has to be tested to prove its efficiency and applicability in the real life education environment. In this respect, the E-Z-Read is the reading program destined for elementary school. At this point, it is important to understand the effectiveness of the program in the real elementary school setting. Basically, the E-Z-Read program was developed specifically to improve reading skills of elementary school students and to facilitate the process of learning to read.
Therefore, it is possible to suggest the hypothesis that the E-Z-Read can facilitate the learning to read and this program is more effective compared to conventional reading programs because the program is oriented on the natural perception of the learning material and developing reading skills in children in the course of play.
In order to test the hypothesis, the study should involve two groups of students involved in the experiment. One group of students from Miss Jones’ classroom will use the E-Z-Read, whereas another group from Mrs. Brown’s classroom will use the conventional reading program. The point is to compare the performance of students in two groups and to reveal their progress and improvements after the implementation of the E-Z-Read and the conventional reading program. The comparison should focus on different aspects of reading, such as fluency of reading, tempo of reading, and comprehension of reading. The comparison between the two groups will reveal, which program is more efficient. To put it more precisely, if students read faster, comprehend the text better, and make fewer errors while reading, then the program is more effective.
At this point, it is important to take into consideration dependent and independent variables. In fact, independent variables are the age of students, which is approximately the same for all students for the age of all students is the same and ranges within a year. Students have the similar educational background, the level of cognitive development, and academic skills and abilities. The dependent variable is the use of the reading program, the E-Z-Read in Miss Jones’ classroom and the conventional reading program in Mrs. Brown’s classroom. At the same time, it is necessary to take into consideration the application of the programs by educators and their experience in teaching. For instance, a more experienced educator can be more successful in implementation a reading program than an inexperienced one. In contrast, an inexperienced educator can fail to implement successfully even the most effective reading program because of poor professional skills. Therefore, it is important for the accuracy and validity of the experiment that the professional level of Miss Jones and Mrs. Brown was approximately the same. In addition, the number of students in each classroom should be equal to insure that the programs are implemented in the equal classroom environment. To make sure that two groups are equivalent at the beginning of the experiment, it is necessary to test reading skills of students, including the fluency, tempo of reading and comprehension of reading. After the experiment the same test will help to identify the progress of students in each group and reveal which reading programs has been more effective.
In this regard, the use of correlations and case studies will be ineffective because the E-Z-Read is a new program and it is necessary to test it in practice, independently of other studies.
