The Effectiveness of TV in Teaching Sight Words to Students with learning Disabilities

Abstract

This article reports a research project in which television was used to teach a set of sight words to LD children. Prior to the television presentations, two separate sets of sight words were selected and matched on the basis of equivalent difficulty level. One set was presented via a National Educational Television program in a series of 32 daily broadcasts. The other set of words was not presented by any teaching procedure. After instruction, each student was tested on his ability to recognize both sets of sight words. The results indicated that student scores obtained through the television medium were no higher than scores which received no presentation. Though the results obtained cannot be generalized beyond this particular classroom population, the research procedure used here suggests a methodology that has relevance for individual classroom teachers and teachers dealing with small numbers of students.