Study: 33475

Sound Partners Intervention Report - Beginning Reading

Review Details

Reviewed: September 2010

At least one finding shows promising evidence of effectiveness

At least one statistically significant positive finding

Meets WWC standards with reservations

For:

Sound Partners Intervention Report - Beginning Reading

Using:

Rating:

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

Alphabetics outcomes—Statistically significant positive effect found for the domain
Outcome measure	Comparison	Period	Sample	Intervention mean	Comparison mean	Significant?	Improvement index
Woodcock Johnson (WJ): Word Attack subtest	Sound Partners vs. business as usual	posttest	Grade 1; 46 students	109.27	94.12	Yes	39
Bryant Pseudoword Test	Sound Partners vs. business as usual	posttest	Grade 1; 46 students	19.45	8.94	Yes	35
Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation	Sound Partners vs. business as usual	posttest	Grade 1; 46 students	15.51	11.15	Yes	32
Wide Range Achievement Test- Revised (WRAT-R): Reading subtest	Sound Partners vs. business as usual	posttest	Grade 1; 46 students	102.45	88.77	Yes	31
Dolch Word Recognition	Sound Partners vs. business as usual	posttest	Grade 1; 46 students	144.74	102.67	Yes	29

Reading Fluency outcomes—Substantively important positive effect found for the domain
Outcome measure	Comparison	Period	Sample	Intervention mean	Comparison mean	Significant?	Improvement index	Evidence tier
Analytical Reading Inventory: Primary	Sound Partners vs. business as usual	posttest	Grade 1; 46 students	45.36	29.42	No	--
Analytical Reading Inventory: First Grade	Sound Partners vs. business as usual	posttest	Grade 1; 46 students	36.57	25.43	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.

Female: 39%
Male: 61%
Urban

Study Details

Setting

Participants were from four elementary schools in an urban school district. At the schools, nearly half of the students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, Title I services were available to students, and two-thirds of students were racial or ethnic minorities.

Study sample

Vadasy, Jenkins, and Pool (2000) is a randomized controlled trial in which 46 first-graders from four elementary schools were randomly assigned to either participate in Sound Partners or receive the schools’ regular classroom instruction. Teachers in 11 classrooms identified up to 6 students each whose reading performance in the fall concerned them. The 64 students identified by the teachers were pretested on four assessments, and those with the 46 lowest scores were randomly assigned. The remaining 18 students were kept as replacement students. In the course of the study, the researchers replaced two treatment and two comparison students on the basis of convenience and scheduling considerations. The groups were balanced on gender (9 girls and 14 boys in each group). The study also examined second-year follow-up scores for a subsample of 37 students. This analysis is not included in this review, however, because the authors did not demonstrate that the intervention and comparison students included in the follow-up results were equivalent at baseline.

Intervention Group

In the study, tutoring took place for 27 weeks. Students attended from 54 to 89 sessions over this period, with an average of 72 sessions per child. The version of Sound Partners used for the study included additional, revised, or expanded components of a preceding version.

Comparison Group

Students in the counterfactual condition participated in the schools’ regular classroom and Title I reading instruction activities.

Outcome descriptions

For both pre- and posttests, the authors administered the Wide Range Achievement Test–Revised Reading subtest. For additional posttests, the authors used the Dolch Word Recognition, the Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery–Revised Word Attack subtest, the Bryant Pseudoword Test, the Yopp-Singer Segmentation Task, and the primary and first-grade passages of the Analytical Reading Inventory. The authors also used two spelling assessments, but they were 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 and A2.2.

Support for implementation

The researchers recruited tutors through the school newsletters. Nine tutors participated in the study (mainly parents of children in the schools). Tutors received $5 per hour for their tutoring and training time, which included eight hours of training before the program began and six additional hours of training during the school year. Training for tutors consisted of explanations, modeling, role-playing of each lesson component, guidelines for behavior management, record keeping, and error correction strategies. Follow-up training occurred during the year by tutor request or when researchers identified a need. Researchers replaced two tutors in the middle of the year with one new tutor.

Effects of Tutoring in Phonological and Early Reading Skills on Students at Risk for Reading Disabilities.