Skip Navigation
Funding Opportunities | Search Funded Research Grants and Contracts

IES Grant

Title: Extending the Interactive Strategies Approach to Older Struggling Readers
Center: NCSER Year: 2007
Principal Investigator: Gelzheiser, Lynn Awardee: State University of New York (SUNY), Albany
Program: Reading, Writing, and Language      [Program Details]
Award Period: 7/15/2007 to 7/14/2010 Award Amount: $1,494,478
Type: Development and Innovation Award Number: R324A070223
Description:

Purpose: The ability to read is critical to success in American schools. As struggling readers progress through school, their educational problems become more complicated because they are expected to acquire knowledge in all academic subject areas through independent reading. Older struggling readers fall increasingly below their peers in academic achievement, and may become disengaged and unmotivated. The purpose of this project is to develop and test a new approach to intervention with older struggling readers in grades 4 and 7 that incorporates both reading and writing skills.

Developing an approach to teaching reading and writing to older struggling readers is complicated because it must address students' deficits in knowledge, vocabulary, and comprehension as well as their problems with lower level skills, such as single word reading. Reading interventions for older struggling readers typically do not integrate instruction on lower level skills (such as phonological skills and single word reading) with higher level skills (such as deficits in knowledge, vocabulary, and comprehension). This research team proposes to develop the Interactive Strategies Approach to integrate lower level and higher level skills to better meet the needs of older struggling readers.

Project Activities: The Interactive Strategies Approach is not a packaged intervention. It is a set of instructional goals, along with suggested activities for achieving those goals, and an approach to selecting the texts that students read. Using this approach, teachers will be able to individualize instructional goals to meet the reading and writing needs of a particular student.

The research team is designing the Interactive Strategies Approach to address multiple instructional goals for older struggling readers, including motivation to read and write, phonological skills, word identification, comprehension and general knowledge, and vocabulary. These goals will be designed to provide direction for each student's individual intervention, which will be developed to take into account the student's current capabilities, the teacher's expectations, classroom resources, and the student's response to the instruction.

Products: The products of this project include a teacher handbook, curriculum guide, and professional development materials to help teachers use the interactive strategies approach to teach reading to struggling readers. Published reports and presentations will also be disseminated to researchers and practitioners.

Structured Abstract

Purpose: The ability to read is critical to success in American schools. As struggling readers progress through school, their educational problems become more complicated because they are expected to acquire knowledge in all academic subject areas through independent reading. Older struggling readers fall increasingly below their peers in academic achievement, and may become disengaged and unmotivated. The purpose of this project is to develop and test a new approach to intervention with older struggling readers in grades 4 and 7 that incorporates both reading and writing skills.

Developing an approach to teaching reading and writing to older struggling readers is complicated because it must address students' deficits in knowledge, vocabulary, and comprehension as well as their problems with lower level skills, such as single word reading. Reading interventions for older struggling readers typically do not integrate instruction on lower level skills (such as phonological skills and single word reading) with higher level skills (such as deficits in knowledge, vocabulary, and comprehension). This research team proposes to develop the Interactive Strategies Approach to integrate lower level and higher level skills to better meet the needs of older struggling readers.

Setting: The schools are located in New York.

Population: Participants are 125 fourth- and seventh-grade students, all receiving special education services with reading as a primary area of need, and scoring at or below a standard score of 90 on the WIAT Reading Comprehension subtest.

Intervention: The Interactive Strategies Approach is not a packaged intervention. It is a set of instructional goals, along with suggested activities for achieving those goals, and an approach to selecting the texts that students read. Using this approach, teachers will be able to individualize instructional goals to meet the reading and writing needs of a particular student.

The research team is designing the Interactive Strategies Approach to address multiple instructional goals for older struggling readers, including motivation to read and write, phonological skills, word identification, comprehension and general knowledge, and vocabulary. These goals will be designed to provide direction for each student's individual intervention, which will be developed to take into account the student's current capabilities, the teacher's expectations, classroom resources, and the student's response to the instruction.

Research Design and Methods: During year 1, 30-36 fourth-grade students will be identified as poor readers and participate a quasi-experimental, one-group, pretest-posttest trial of the Interactive Strategies Approach. Following that initial trial, modifications will be made to the intervention, and a second trial using the same design will be conducted. During year 2, 30-36 seventh-grade students will be identified as poor readers and participate in a quasi-experimental, one-group, pretest-posttest trial of the Interactive Strategies Approach. A second trial using the same design will occur in year 3 with a cohort of 20-24 seventh-grade students.

Control Condition: The control condition receives standard classroom practice.

Key Measures: Four classes of variables will be used to measure students: measures for assessing reader characteristics (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, 3rd Edition, WIAT-II, Listening Comprehension subtest, Motivation for Reading survey, Reasoning Measure, and Instructional History Measure); measures for assessing the effects of intervention (WIAT-II, Reading Comprehension subtest, Woodcock-Johnson-III, Reading Fluency subtest, Word Identification subtest, (?) Word Attack subtest, Social Studies Knowledge Measure, New York State Assessment of English Language Arts); measures for assessing skills and strategies (Elementary Spelling Inventory - 1, Qualitative Reading Inventory - 4, and Strategic Reading Inventory); and measures for continuous progress monitoring (Monitoring Basic Skills Progress).

Data Analytic Strategy: The main analysis will be conducted separately for fourth and seventh grades, but will combine data across year cohorts. For the progress monitoring weekly assessments, data will be analyzed using individual growth curve analysis. For the assessments that are collected at three points in time (fall, midyear, and spring), multilevel modeling will be used.

Publications

Book chapter

Gelzheiser, L.M., Scanlon, D., and Hallgren-Flynn, L. (2010). Spotlight on RTI for Adolescents: An Example of Intensive Middle School Intervention Using the Interactive Strategies Approach-Extended. In M.Y. Lipson, and K.K. Wixson (Eds.), Approaches to Response to Intervention (RTI): Evidence-Based Frameworks for Preventing Reading Difficulties (pp. 211–230). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Journal article, monograph, or newsletter

Gelzheiser, L.M., Hallgren-Flynn, L., Connors, M., and Scanlon, D. (2014). Reading Thematically-Related Texts to Develop Knowledge and Comprehension. The Reading Teacher, 68(1): 53–63. doi:10.1002/trtr.1271 Full text

Gelzheiser, L.M., Scanlon, D., Vellutino, F., Hallgren-Flynn, L., and Schatschneider, C. (2011). Effects of the Interactive Strategies Approach-Extended: A Responsive and Comprehensive Intervention for Intermediate-Grade Struggling Readers. The Elementary School Journal, 112(2): 280–306. doi:10.1086/661525


Back