Study: 82931

Practice Guide

Review Details

Reviewed: February 2023

No statistically significant positive
findings

Meets WWC standards without reservations

For:

Practice Guide (findings for ABRACADABRA)

Using:

Rating:

Meets WWC standards without reservations because it is a randomized controlled trial with low attrition.

This review may not reflect the full body of research evidence for this intervention.

Evidence Tier rating based solely on this study. This intervention may achieve a higher tier when combined with the full body of evidence.

Findings

Letter identification outcomes—Indeterminate effect found for the domain
Outcome measure	Comparison	Period	Sample	Intervention mean	Comparison mean	Significant?	Improvement index	Evidence tier
Letter Sound Knowledge	ABRACADABRA vs. Business as usual	0 Days	Full sample; 74 classes	21.59	20.63	No	--

Listening comprehension outcomes—Indeterminate effect found for the domain
Outcome measure	Comparison	Period	Sample	Intervention mean	Comparison mean	Significant?	Improvement index	Evidence tier
Group Reading and Diagnostic Evaluation: Listening Comprehension	ABRACADABRA vs. Business as usual	0 Days	Full sample; 66 classes	15.66	15.57	No	--

Oral reading fluency outcomes—Indeterminate effect found for the domain
Outcome measure	Comparison	Period	Sample	Intervention mean	Comparison mean	Significant?	Improvement index	Evidence tier
DIBELS Oral Reading Fluency Subtest	ABRACADABRA vs. None	0 Days	Grade: 1, 2; 50 classes	35.80	38.32	No	--

Phonology outcomes—Substantively important positive effect found for the domain
Outcome measure	Comparison	Period	Sample	Intervention mean	Comparison mean	Significant?	Improvement index	Evidence tier
Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP): Blending Words	ABRACADABRA vs. Business as usual	0 Days	Full sample; 74 classes	10.56	9.48	No	--
Dynamic Indicators for Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS): Phoneme Segmentation Fluency	ABRACADABRA vs. Business as usual	0 Days	Full sample; 74 classes	30.18	27.60	No	--

Reading Comprehension outcomes—Indeterminate effect found for the domain
Outcome measure	Comparison	Period	Sample	Intervention mean	Comparison mean	Significant?	Improvement index	Evidence tier
Group Reading Assessment and Diagnostic Evaluation (GRADE): Sentence Comprehension Subtest	ABRACADABRA vs. Business as usual	0 Days	Grade: 1, 2; 46 classes	9.41	9.26	No	--
DIBELS Reading Retell Fluency Subtest	ABRACADABRA vs. Business as usual	0 Days	Grade: 1, 2; 50 classes	12.24	12.39	No	--

Word reading outcomes—Indeterminate effect found for the domain
Outcome measure	Comparison	Period	Sample	Intervention mean	Comparison mean	Significant?	Improvement index	Evidence tier
Fry Words	ABRACADABRA vs. Business as usual	0 Days	Full sample; 74 classes	12.22	11.53	No	--

Evidence Tier rating based solely on this study. This intervention may achieve a higher tier when combined with the full body of evidence.

Sample Characteristics

Characteristics of study sample as reported by study author.

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International

Study Details

Setting

The study takes place in 74 classrooms across three provinces in Canada: Quebec, Ontario, and Alberta. Kindergarten, first grade, and second grade classrooms were included in the sample.

Study sample

The sample was split with 316 kindergarten students (154 treatment, 162 comparison), 616 first graders (352 treatment, 264 comparison), and 135 second graders (43 treatment and 92 comparison). The sample had 543 female students (284 treatment and 259 comparison) and 265 male students (265 treatment and 259 comparison). Across both groups, the average age was 73.69 months. The study did not exclude any students because of language issues or exceptionalities. The authors do not provide further information about whether there are any English learners or special education students in the sample.

Intervention Group

The ABRACADABRA program is a web-based software that has 32 activities and 17 stories. The program was integrated into the existing classroom activities. The intervention was implemented for two hours a week for 10 to 12 weeks. The research team encouraged a 1 hour format for teachers to implement: 10 minutes of word-level work (which included letter knowledge, phonological awareness, and word building); 10 minutes of text-level work (which focused on: (1) fluency activities on high frequency words, reading accurately and with expression, choral reading; and (2) comprehension activities that asked students to make predictions about story outcomes, understand and recognize story elements, creating summaries of text, vocabulary, and writing. These activities utilized the stories within the ABRACADABRA software); 20 minutes of collaborative work (which supported student collaboration to practice the skills learned during the word-level and text-level work--and it did not need to be done at the computer. A sample of an activity during this time would be asking students to write an alternate endings for stories they had read earlier in the sessions with a partner); and 20 minutes of extension activities (which gave students the opportunity to apply what they had learned further. For example, if they read a story about fruit, the students may be asked to draw fruit and label them).

Comparison Group

Classrooms in the comparison condition continued their "business as usual" English language arts lessons.

Support for implementation

Teachers in the treatment classrooms were given a 1 day training on the ABRACADABRA program prior to implementation. Teachers were supported by research assistants in their classrooms, who were called upon the most during the initial implementation.

A (pan-Canadian) cluster randomized control effectiveness trial of the ABRACADABRA web-based literacy program.