Effects of reading decodable texts in supplemental first-grade tutoring.
Jenkins, J. R., Peyton, J. A., Sanders, E. A., & Vadasy, P. F. (2004). Scientific Studies of Reading, 8(1), 53–85. Retrieved from: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ683127
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examining59Students, grade1
Practice Guide
Review Details
Reviewed: February 2023
- Practice Guide (findings for Decodable texts—Jenkins et al. (2004))
- Quasi-Experimental Design
- Meets WWC standards with reservations because it uses a quasi-experimental design in which the analytic intervention and comparison groups satisfy the baseline equivalence requirement.
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
|
Outcome measure |
Comparison | Period | Sample |
Intervention mean |
Comparison mean |
Significant? |
Improvement index |
Evidence tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Diagnostic Test of Basic Decoding Skills (Bryant 1975) |
Decodable texts—Jenkins et al. (2004) vs. Business as usual |
0 Weeks |
"More decodable" intervention vs. comparison;
|
20.14 |
9.42 |
Yes |
|
|
|
Text word list (author developed) |
Decodable texts—Jenkins et al. (2004) vs. Business as usual |
0 Weeks |
"More decodable" intervention vs. comparison;
|
11.63 |
6.93 |
Yes |
|
|
|
Woodcock Reading Mastery Test - Revised: Word Attack |
Decodable texts—Jenkins et al. (2004) vs. Business as usual |
0 Weeks |
"More decodable" intervention vs. comparison ;
|
15.49 |
8.27 |
Yes |
|
|
|
Test of Word Reading Efficiency-Sight Word Efficiency |
Decodable texts—Jenkins et al. (2004) vs. Business as usual |
0 Weeks |
"More decodable" intervention vs. comparison;
|
27.61 |
21.49 |
No |
-- | |
|
Woodcock Reading Mastery Test - Revised: Word Identification |
Decodable texts—Jenkins et al. (2004) vs. Business as usual |
0 Weeks |
"More decodable" intervention vs. comparison;
|
32.98 |
26.72 |
No |
-- | |
|
Test of Word Reading Efficiency-Phonemic Decoding Efficiency |
Decodable texts—Jenkins et al. (2004) vs. Business as usual |
0 Weeks |
"More decodable" intervention vs. comparison;
|
10.72 |
8.04 |
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
Study sample characteristics were not reported.Study Details
Setting
The tutoring programs were administered outside of the classroom and complemented regular reading instruction.
Intervention Group
Both interventions consisted of 30 minute tutoring sessions, 4 days a week, for 25 weeks. Each lesson consisted of some or all of the following components, each lasting 2 to 20 minutes: 1. Practicing letter-sound relations (students learned one new letter-sound relation in each lesson and practiced writing) 2. Reading decodable words (students wrote words from letter sounds introduced in earlier lessons) 3. Spelling (students spelled three decodable words from the lesson) 4. Reading nondecodable words (students practiced reading words that were not decodable using the phonics they had covered up to that point) 5. Text reading (students read a new book every 2 weeks and reread previous books) The interventions differed only in the texts used for the text reading component. The more decodable texts included Bob Books (Malsen, 1987) and a few books from Get Ready, Get Set, Read! (Foster, Erickson, & Gifford, 1996), and the Wright Skills et (Wright Group, 1999). The less decodable texts included the Wright Group: Story Box (2000), Vision Series (1997), and Sunshine Books (1996). Students in the intervention group also participated in their school's regular reading program. Teachers in the study used a variety of programs, including Macmillan, Scott Foresman, Gin, Open Court, and Houghton Mifflin. - The study does not indicate a home component to the interventions. - Materials used include storybooks, detailed lesson instructions, attendance forms, and sheets to record each student's lesson. - The intervention is scripted. - There is no indication of a formative assessment.
Comparison Group
Students in the comparison group participated in their school's regular reading program but did not participate in tutoring. Teachers in the study used a variety of programs, including Macmillan, Scott Foresman, Gin, Open Court, and Houghton Mifflin.
Support for implementation
Tutors received 3 hours of training from the research staff, as well as weekly observations, coaching, and follow-up meetings.
Sound Partners Intervention Report - Beginning Reading
Review Details
Reviewed: September 2010
- Quasi-Experimental Design
- Meets WWC standards with reservations
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.
Please see the WWC summary of evidence for Sound Partners.
Findings
|
Outcome measure |
Comparison | Period | Sample |
Intervention mean |
Comparison mean |
Significant? |
Improvement index |
Evidence tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Bryant Pseudoword Test |
Sound Partners vs. none |
Posttest |
Grade 1;
|
20.82 |
9.40 |
Yes |
|
|
|
Woodcock Reading Mastery Test Revised (WRMT-R): Word Attack subtest |
Sound Partners vs. none |
Posttest |
Grade 1;
|
14.70 |
8.25 |
Yes |
|
|
|
Wide Range Achievement Test- Revised (WRAT-R): Reading subtest |
Sound Partners vs. none |
Posttest |
Grade 1;
|
46.77 |
40.40 |
Yes |
|
|
|
Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE): Sight Word Efficiency subtest |
Sound Partners vs. none |
Posttest |
Grade 1;
|
27.18 |
21.10 |
No |
-- | |
|
Woodcock Reading Mastery Test Revised (WRMT–R): Word Identification subtest |
Sound Partners vs. none |
Posttest |
Grade 1;
|
32.84 |
26.20 |
No |
-- | |
|
Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE): Phonemic Decoding Efficiency subtest |
Sound Partners vs. none |
Posttest |
Grade 1;
|
10.73 |
8.05 |
No |
-- |
|
Outcome measure |
Comparison | Period | Sample |
Intervention mean |
Comparison mean |
Significant? |
Improvement index |
Evidence tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Woodcock Reading Mastery Test Revised (WRMT-R): Passage Comprehension subtest |
Sound Partners vs. none |
Posttest |
Grade 1;
|
14.66 |
9.75 |
Yes |
|
|
|
Outcome measure |
Comparison | Period | Sample |
Intervention mean |
Comparison mean |
Significant? |
Improvement index |
Evidence tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Phonetically Controlled Passage Accuracy |
Sound Partners vs. none |
Posttest |
Grade 1;
|
0.81 |
0.71 |
Yes |
|
|
|
Phonetically Controlled Passage Rate |
Sound Partners vs. none |
Posttest |
Grade 1;
|
41.30 |
27.70 |
No |
-- | |
|
Nonphonetically Controlled Passage Accuracy |
Sound Partners vs. none |
Posttest |
Grade 1;
|
0.81 |
0.73 |
No |
-- | |
|
Nonphonetically Controlled Passage Rate |
Sound Partners vs. none |
Posttest |
Grade 1;
|
36.13 |
26.35 |
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.
-
27% English language learners -
Female: 43%
Male: 57% -
Urban
-
Race Asian 15% Black 12% Other or unknown 15% White 44% -
Ethnicity Hispanic 13% Not Hispanic or Latino 87%
Study Details
Setting
The study was conducted in 11 public schools in an urban area.
Study sample
Teachers identified first-graders from 26 classrooms in 11 schools whom they considered at risk for reading failure. The researchers then identified 121 students who scored at or below the 25th percentile on the Reading subtest of the WRAT-R as eligible for inclusion in the study. The treatment and comparison groups were formed partly by convenience and partly through random assignment, with some schools agreeing to allow students to serve only as the comparison group. After attrition, the analysis sample included 79 students (in 21 classes) in the treatment condition and 20 students (in 10 classrooms) in the comparison condition. The study was conducted in a single school year.
Intervention Group
The tutoring lessons in phonics were drawn from Sound Partners. They targeted letter-sound correspondences, blending letters into sounds, reading and spelling phonetically regular words, and reading nondecodable and high-frequency words scheduled to appear in the text portion of the lesson. Tutors also worked with students who read from storybooks that had varying degrees of decodability, with one of the treatment groups reading from books with highly decodable words and the other treatment group reading from books with high-frequency but less decodable words. The WWC considers the two treatment groups to be variants of the Sound Partners intervention and so presents them as a single treatment group. Lessons were scripted, and all tutoring was one-on-one. Lessons were provided 30 minutes a day, four days a week, for 25 weeks.
Comparison Group
Children in the control group received typical classroom instruction only, without tutoring in phonics or story reading.
Outcome descriptions
At the conclusion of the intervention, the students were given the Phonemic Decoding and Sight Word reading subtests of the TOWRE; the Word Attack, Word Identification, and Passage Comprehension subtests of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test–Revised; the Bryant Pseudoword Test; the Reading subtest of the Wide Range Achievement Test–Revised; and fluency and accuracy reading tests from passages with highly decodable words, as well as passages with less decodable words. The study includes a text reading list that contained words that the students read as part of the Sound Partners curriculum. The WWC determined that this outcome was overaligned with the intervention and is therefore not included in this review. Students also took two spelling tests that are not included in this review because they are outside the scope of the Beginning Reading review protocol. For a more detailed description of the included outcome measures, see Appendices A2.1–A2.3.
Support for implementation
Tutors received scripted phonics lessons, directions for book reading, attendance forms and recording sheets for each student’s lesson coverage, and a set of books for reading practice. Research staff provided tutors with three hours of formal training in lesson procedures, conducted weekly observations, provided ongoing coaching in lesson delivery, and held monthly follow-up meetings.
Assisting Students Struggling with Reading: Response to Intervention (RtI) and Multi-Tier Intervention in the Primary Grades
Review Details
Reviewed: February 2009
Assisting Students Struggling with Reading: Response to Intervention (RtI) and Multi-Tier Intervention in the Primary Grades Practice Guide- Assisting Students Struggling with Reading Practice Guide Review Protocol 1.0
- Review Standards 2.0
- Randomized Controlled Trial
- Meets WWC standards without reservations
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
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.
-
27% English language learners -
Female: 43%
Male: 57% -
Urban
-
Race Asian 15% Black 12% Other or unknown 15% White 44% -
Ethnicity Hispanic 13% Not Hispanic or Latino 87%
An indicator of the effect of the intervention, the improvement index can be interpreted as the expected change in percentile rank for an average comparison group student if that student had received the intervention.
For more, please see the WWC Glossary entry for improvement index.
An outcome is the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are attained as a result of an activity. An outcome measures is an instrument, device, or method that provides data on the outcome.
A finding that is included in the effectiveness rating. Excluded findings may include subgroups and subscales.
The sample on which the analysis was conducted.
The group to which the intervention group is compared, which may include a different intervention, business as usual, or no services.
The timing of the post-intervention outcome measure.
The number of students included in the analysis.
The mean score of students in the intervention group.
The mean score of students in the comparison group.
The WWC considers a finding to be statistically significant if the likelihood that the finding is due to chance alone, rather than a real difference, is less than five percent.
The WWC reviews studies for WWC products, Department of Education grant competitions, and IES performance measures.
The name and version of the document used to guide the review of the study.
The version of the WWC design standards used to guide the review of the study.
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A related publication that was reviewed alongside the main study of interest.
Study findings for this report.
Based on the direction, magnitude, and statistical significance of the findings within a domain, the WWC characterizes the findings from a study as one of the following: statistically significant positive effects, substantively important positive effects, indeterminate effects, substantively important negative effects, and statistically significant negative effects. For more, please see the WWC Handbook.
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Tier 2 Moderate indicates moderate evidence of effectiveness, and
Tier 3 Promising indicates promising evidence of effectiveness,
as defined in the
non-regulatory guidance for ESSA
and the regulations for ED discretionary grants (EDGAR Part 77).