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Overview1
Wilson Reading System® is a supplemental reading and writing curriculum designed to promote reading accuracy (decoding) and spelling (encoding) skills for students with word-level deficits. The program is designed to teach phonemic awareness, alphabetic principles (sound-symbol relationship), word study, spelling, sight word instruction, fluency, vocabulary, oral expressive language development, and comprehension. Students engage in a variety of activities in the classroom, including hearing sounds, practicing with syllable and word cards, listening to others read, and reading aloud and repeating what they have read in their own words. The program is designed to help children master new skills, with reviews reinforcing previous lessons. This program was designed for students in grade 2 and above. Fundations®, a related program not reviewed in this report, was recently developed with the same principle for students in kindergarten through third grade. In the single study reviewed by the WWC for this report, only the word-level components of Wilson Reading System® were implemented.
Research
One study of a modified version of Wilson Reading System® met the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards. 2 This one study included more than 70 third-grade students in Pennsylvania. 3 The WWC considers the extent of evidence for Wilson Reading System® to be small for alphabetics, fluency, and comprehension. No studies that met WWC evidence standards with or without reservations addressed general reading achievement.
Effectiveness
Wilson Reading System® was found to have potentially positive effects on alphabetics and no discernible effects on fluency and comprehension.
| Alphabetics | Fluency | Comprehension | General reading achievement | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating of effectiveness | Potentially positive | No discernible effects | No discernible effects | na |
| Improvement index4 | Average: +13 percentile points Range: +6 to +22 percentile points |
Average: +6 percentile points | Average: +7 percentile points Range: +3 to +11 percentile points |
na |
| na = not applicable | ||||
2 The fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary components of the Wilson Reading System® were eliminated from instruction at the request of Torgesen et al. for the purposes of the study. For further information about the program implemented, please see the research and findings sections in this report.
3 The evidence presented in this report is based on available research. Findings and conclusions may change as new research becomes available.
4 These numbers show the average and range of student-level improvement indices for all findings across the study.