A Randomized Controlled Trial Study of the ABRACADABRA Reading Intervention Program in Grade 1
Savage, Robert S.; Abrami, Philip; Hipps, Geoffrey; Deault, Louise (2009). Journal of Educational Psychology, v101 n3 p590-604 Aug 2009. Retrieved from: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ861173
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examining101Students, grade1
Practice Guide
Review Details
Reviewed: February 2024
- Practice Guide (findings for ABRACADABRA)
- Randomized Controlled Trial
- 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
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Outcome measure |
Comparison | Period | Sample |
Intervention mean |
Comparison mean |
Significant? |
Improvement index |
Evidence tier |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Letter Sounds |
ABRACADABRA vs. Business as usual |
0 Days |
Analytic Phonics vs. Regular Classroom Instruction;
|
24.09 |
22.78 |
Yes |
|
|
|
| Show Supplemental Findings | |||||||||
|
Letter Sounds |
ABRACADABRA vs. Business as usual |
7 Months |
Analytic Phonics vs. Regular Classroom Instruction;
|
23.89 |
23.93 |
No |
-- | ||
|
Outcome measure |
Comparison | Period | Sample |
Intervention mean |
Comparison mean |
Significant? |
Improvement index |
Evidence tier |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processes (CTOPP): Phonemic Blending Subtest |
ABRACADABRA vs. Business as usual |
0 Days |
Analytic Phonics vs. Regular Classroom Instruction;
|
105.91 |
102.87 |
No |
-- | ||
|
CTOPP: Phoneme Elision subtest |
ABRACADABRA vs. Business as usual |
0 Days |
Analytic Phonics vs. Regular Classroom Instruction;
|
101.25 |
97.08 |
No |
-- | ||
| Show Supplemental Findings | |||||||||
|
CTOPP: Phoneme Elision subtest |
ABRACADABRA vs. Business as usual |
7 Months |
Analytic Phonics vs. Regular Classroom Instruction;
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99.39 |
98.33 |
No |
-- | ||
|
Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processes (CTOPP): Phonemic Blending Subtest |
ABRACADABRA vs. Business as usual |
7 Months |
Analytic Phonics vs. Regular Classroom Instruction;
|
100.73 |
100.83 |
No |
-- | ||
|
Outcome measure |
Comparison | Period | Sample |
Intervention mean |
Comparison mean |
Significant? |
Improvement index |
Evidence tier |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Woodcock Johnson - Word Attack |
ABRACADABRA vs. Business as usual |
0 Days |
Synthetic Phonics vs. Regular Classroom Instruction;
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111.26 |
108.09 |
No |
-- | ||
| Show Supplemental Findings | |||||||||
|
Woodcock Johnson - Word Attack |
ABRACADABRA vs. Business as usual |
7 Months |
Synthetic Phonics vs. Regular Classroom Instruction;
|
108.25 |
109.08 |
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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Female: 46%
Male: 54% -
Suburban, Urban
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International
Study Details
Setting
Students worked in groups of 4 around a single computer. A trained facilitator was present to guide and support the students.
Study sample
Among participants in the sample, 64% were spoken and/or read to in a language other than English or French at home.
Intervention Group
The ABRACADABRA sessions occurred 4 times per week for 20 weeks. Students worked in groups of 4 around a single computer. A trained facilitator supported the students and guided them through the process and worked with both a synthetic and an analytic phonics group. Intervention duration varied by group: On average, students received 13 hours of instruction with the software (range 11-15 hours). A consistent schedule was used for both intervention groups: Animated alphabet (2 minutes), core activity (4 minutes), story/comprehension activity (8 minutes), core activity (3 minutes), and reward activity (2 minutes). In all, 35% of each session was devoted to phonics activities while the other 65% was devoted to alphabet, fluency, and comprehension activities. The Animated Alphabet demonstrated to the students how to write a letter, and provided an alliterative phrase to associate with it. The facilitator encouraged students to repeat the sentence, make other words that start with the letter, or come up with clues to have the other students guess the letter. The core activity came next and focused on word attack strategies. Students practiced phonics twice in each session until their correct response rate was 80% as a group for 3 consecutive sessions. At that point, the students progressed to the next level or switched to a different phonics activity. The next activity was reading a story and took several sessions to get through. Students were able to read individually, as a group, and also read repeatedly. The program provided varied levels of support, including having a word or page read by the narrator. Prediction, Comprehension Monitoring, Sequencing, and Story Response activities were included to enhance fluency by allowing the children to engage in higher level comprehension skills by discussing the plot, characters, and themes of the story. A fun reward activity of the students' choosing (e.g., Letter-Sound Search, Alphabet Song, Letter Bingo, or High-Frequency Words) ended each session. While the structure of the program was consistent, facilitators had the flexibility to respond to interests, ability levels, and dynamics of each small group. Facilitators could build lessons around the needs of their groups and offer repeated practice to students who had not mastered particular concepts. Synthetic Phonics focused on developing students' skills at blending and segmenting words at the level of the individual phoneme unit. During the Animated Alphabet activity, students were introduced to six letters per week and practiced the letter-sound associations through Auditory blending (blending sounds together to choose a matching picture), Blending Train (identifying a word by blending its letter-sounds), Basic Decoding (sounding out and reading words), and Auditory Segmenting (matching words to their segmented sounds). Each activity had a series of levels to allow students to advance to more complex phonemic structures of words as their skill improved. Analytic Phonics introduced letter sounds slowly to allow students to explore the sounds more in depth, getting students to recognize and generate rhyming words as well as manipulating the rime unit in words. Activities included Same Word (identifying similar words based on their sound), Word Matching (matching word cards by their beginning sounds), Rhyme Matching (matching words that rhyme), Word Families (making words from the same word family by changing the first letter), and Word Changing (manipulating word families to form a new word) and focused on having students learn to attend to initial sounds, recognize rhyming words, and explore shard spelling patterns of word families.
Comparison Group
Students in the control group received regular classroom instruction while students in the intervention groups participated in the intervention.
Support for implementation
The study mentions that a trained facilitator guided and supported students. The trained facilitators were graduate students in education who were trained by the research team running the study. The majority were teachers or early years educators and were given training on how to effectively manage small groups of children.
Additional Sources
In the case of multiple manuscripts that report on one study, the WWC selects one manuscript as the primary citation and lists other manuscripts that describe the study as additional sources.
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Deault, L., Savage, R., & Abrami, P. (2009). Inattention and response to the ABRACADABRA web-based literacy intervention. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 2(3), 250–286.
Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade
Review Details
Reviewed: June 2016
Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade Practice Guide- 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
Study sample characteristics were not reported.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.
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A related publication that was reviewed alongside the main study of interest.
Study findings for this report.
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