Fort Smith Public Schools – Chaffin Junior High School – Special Education – Decoding
Arkansas, Reading, Response to Intervention, RtI, Secondary, Seeing Stars, Special Education, Tier 3
Chaffin Junior High School in Fort Smith, Arkansas serves a large percentage of students who are at-risk of reading failure. During the 2020-21 school year, Chaffin Junior High implemented Lindamood-Bell® instruction to address the specific needs of this student population. Thirty special education students received an average of 64.7 hours of Seeing Stars instruction to develop symbol imagery for reading. Instruction was delivered by Fort Smith teachers who received professional development in the programs developed by Lindamood-Bell’s founders. Student gains were measured with a battery of reading assessments.
On average, Seeing Stars students achieved significant improvements in reading. They made large standard score changes on all measures. Additionally, the 24-point percentile increase in phonemic awareness put these students within the normal range (25th-75th percentile). Their pre- to posttest results were statistically significant on all measures. The results of this study illustrate that Lindamood-Bell instruction in the Seeing Stars program leads to improved reading, which is essential to achieving success with school curricula.
PROFILE: Chaffin Junior High – Special Education
Number of Students: 30 Average Age: 14.2
Average Hours of Instruction: 64.7
Lindamood-Bell Programs Implemented: Seeing Stars®
Outcome Measures:
• Symbol Imagery Test
• Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing Test-3rd
• Woodcock Reading Mastery Test-3rd (word attack)
• Wide Range Achievement Test-4th (reading and spelling)
• Gray Oral Reading Tests-4th (accuracy, fluency, and comprehension)
