Validation of a supplemental reading intervention for first-grade children.

Findings

Word reading  outcomes—Statistically significant positive effect found for the domain

Outcome measure	Comparison	Period	Sample	Intervention mean	Comparison mean	Significant?	Improvement     index	Evidence tier
Decoding Word Fluency	Small group reading intervention—Case et al. (2010) vs. Business as usual	0 Days	Full sample; 30 students	14.60	8.67	Yes	34
Woodcock Reading Mastery Test - Revised: Word Attack	Small group reading intervention—Case et al. (2010) vs. Business as usual	0 Days	Full sample; 30 students	8.80	5.13	No	--
Woodcock Reading Mastery Test - Revised: Word Identification	Small group reading intervention—Case et al. (2010) vs. Business as usual	0 Days	Full sample; 30 students	24.33	21.20	No	--
Word Identification Fluency	Small group reading intervention—Case et al. (2010) vs. Business as usual	0 Days	Full sample; 30 students	9.33	7.73	No	--

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

Study Details

Setting

This study took place in three non-Title 1 public schools located in a large, suburban mid-Atlantic school district.

Study sample

All students in the sample were reading below grade level. The three schools represented in the sample have between 22% and 37% of their students qualify for free and reduced priced lunch.

Intervention Group

This un-named short term tutoring intervention was administered by three graduate student tutors with a range of 2 to 7 years of experience in classroom teaching. These tutors received 25 hours of training on assessment and instruction related to the intervention prior to implementing the intervention. The tutors were instructed to follow the 24 scripted lessons, with minimal allowance for deviation from the scripts. These lessons were a combination of published reading programs and research-based instructional methods, and the lessons were intended to focus on phonemic awareness, word attack skills, spelling, sight-word recognition, vocabulary, oral reading fluency, and comprehension. Instruction was delivered to small groups of three to four children. Tutors used the first series from the "Learn to Read Program" (Pro-Ed) as well as "Dr. Maggie's Phonics Readers: A new View" and "Dolch Basic Words". Each lesson contained three main parts: 1) a 15-minute portion focusing on phonemic awareness, phonics skills, and letter-sound relationships (adapted from "Fundations" by Wilson Language Training, 2002, and Peer Assisted Learning Strategies from Fuchs and colleagues); 2) a ten-minute portion focusing on sight words, decodable words, vocabulary and prereading comprehension strategies; and 3) 15 minute portion focusing on reading fluency and comprehension activities with timed reading, repeated choral reading, and comprehension discussion. Every fourth lesson this format changed, so that instead of choral and timed reading, students listened to an individual student read a decodable and leveled trade book and then the group read the text chorally. Phonics activities from "Fundations" included the Echo Find Word requiring students to repeat a word expressed by the tutor and then use magnetic letters and boards to create the correct letter sequence. The sight word recognition and vocabulary portion of the tutoring sequence was adapted from "Fundations" program and Denton and Hochers (2005) Responsive Reading Instruction. Some of the activities included skywriting and repeated spelling practice to learn sight works. Irregular words that were to be encountered in text were discussed briefly as well. Students performed "prereading" of the selected text by thinking about the title and a picture from the text. For reading fluency, monitoring, and comprehension, reading of the text began with "first timing" or an activity where students attempted to read as many selected words from the text passage as possible within one minute (activity adapted from "Read Naturally" (Ihnot, 2002). Tutors then led students through three choral readings of the passage. Tutors read through the passage slowly at first, stopping a challenging words for decoding practice. At the end of the three choral readings, students did a "final timing" where they were again presented the list of words from the passage and asked to read as many as they could in one minute. Time permitting, students graphed their scores. Tutors then led students to reconsider their earlier predictions and discuss whether their predictions were confirmed. Further discussion of the story wrapped up the comprehension portion of the tutoring lesson.

Comparison Group

Students randomly assigned to the control condition received their normal two hour reading instruction.

Support for implementation

The three tutors received 25 hours of pre-implementation training. Moreover, each tutoring session was recorded. Primary investigators assessed fidelity of implementation and determined that mean fidelity across lessons was 90%.