[ impact of teaching phonemic awareness by means of direct instruction on reading achievement of students with reading disorder]

Phonemic awareness is one of the most important predictors of reading skills that has been taught by different procedures. One of the procedures is implementation of direct instruction in instruction of phonemic awareness. Current study is one of the unique studies in Iran that investigate impact of direct instruction in phonemic awareness on reading achievement of students with reading disorder. Three male second grade elementary students with reading disorder in a regular school in district six of the office of education in Tehran were selected. Multiple-baseline across subjects was selected as a research design. The following tests were used as diagnostic criteria: reading and dyslexia test and Wechsler intelligence scale for children-revised. Moreover, a reading inventory consisting of 100 words was developed by researchers to assess the reading ability of the subjects. Data were collected in three phases: baseline, intervention, and follow-up. During the intervention phase, the intervention strategies were used while during baseline and follow-up, data were collected without any intervention. Comparing three phases of the study, we may conclude that intervention package consisting of direct instruction of phonological awareness was an effective strategy in reading achievement of all three students. In addition, follow-up data indicated that the effects of the intervention procedures were stable across time. Direct instruction of phonological awareness was effective in reading achievement of students with reading disorder in elementary school and increasing their abilities in reading

[ effect of puppet play therapy intervention on communicative skills of autistic children]

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the puppet play therapy intervention on communicative skills of autistic children. This research has implemented in the shape of quasi-experimental designs with pre-post test and control group as a design based action research method. The preschool age autistic children of Mashhad city was our statistical population that ten patients out of them have allocated in control and intervention group who were participated in puppet play therapy intervention in 2009-2010. The Early Social-Communication Scales [ESCS] was performed in before and after intervention. The data were analyzed by The U Mann-Whitney and The wilcoxon's Signed-Ranks Tests. Findings indicate that in terms of total score of ESCS, there is significant differences between groups [P=0.009]. Also on eye contact subscales, initiating behavioral requests [P= 0.012], low-level behavioral requests [P= 0.012], responding to social interaction [P=0.015], over all initiating behavioral requests [P=0.011], and requests implementation [P=0.005], puppet play therapy intervention group has significant differences. About achievement [P=0.335], initiating requests [P=0.214], pointing to objects [P=1.00], and give objects [P=0.74] subscales, there is no significant differences. Qualitative findings from the parental reports also indicate that intervention may be effective. The results indicate that puppet play therapy has been effective for achievement of communicative skills of autistic children