Abstract
Students with disabilities in upper elementary school often struggle to access the complex vocabulary found in their grade level texts (Berninger et al., 2010; Claravall, 2016). The utility of phonics decreases as the text complexity increases and students require skills they can apply to the multisyllabic words they encounter in higher elementary grades (Chall & Jacobs, 1983; Wanzek et al., 2010). These same students are often removed from their general education classrooms for interventions during non-core subject instruction, such as when Social Justice lessons are taught (Moore, 2008; Wade, 2007). This places students with disabilities, a marginalized population, in a position to miss instruction that includes the rich, complex vocabulary they should hear and read along with history and scenarios that address their own lived experiences (Agmon et al., 2016). Delivering morphological awareness interventions embedded in texts that can be aligned with the Social Justice Standards can improve students with disabilities’ access to multisyllabic words up to 60% (McCutchin et al., 2014; Nagy et al., 2006; Tighe & Binder, 2015).
This research came from the desire to improve the literacy levels of my students. As a special education teacher/case manager, I found it alarming that several of my sixth-grade students still struggled to decode and comprehend the words found in their grade level texts. Some of the students on my caseload were still reading at a lower elementary level. This gave me the desire to create and implement a morphology intervention using single case design so I could have clear data that would support this method as a valid way to improve all areas of literacy for my students.
The results of the research showed the increased effectiveness of morphological awareness interventions for students with disabilities in the form of increased fluency and morphology/vocabulary scores. The intervention was applied for a short period of time due to taking place during the pandemic yet still yielded positive results for student literacy.
In conclusion, offering students with disabilities an intervention that addresses weaknesses in reading multisyllabic words while providing the opportunity to practice higher order thinking skills is ideal. Embedding the intervention in content containing complex vocabulary, such as the Social Justice Standards, ensures that students with disabilities are not denied access to curriculum that directly affects them as a marginalized group.