A study is currently in progress at Bridge City Correctional Center for Youth, a secure facility for 180 delinguent youth, which is located along the banks of the Mississippi River in the Greater New Orleans area. Youth at the facility are generally weak and fragile, younger, and more likely to be first time offenders than youth at other facilities in the state. This study attempts to find the effect on reading level of a brief daily reading exercise called the Great Leaps Reading Program. This program requires daily reading in structured, sequenced reading passages, phrases, and a list of phonemes. Curriculum-based measurement data is collected and posted on graphs for each student in the program.
Materials are available at the elementary, middle school and high school level.
Subjects in the experimental group will receive the brief intervention daily, in addition to the regular reading instruction. The session will be facilitated by the teacher or teacher aide. Control subjects will receive the current reading curriculum and no additional interventions.