Study: 82978

Practice Guide

Review Details

Reviewed: February 2023

At least one finding shows promising evidence of effectiveness

At least one statistically significant positive finding

Meets WWC standards without reservations

For:

Practice Guide (findings for Practice reading aloud difficult text—O'Connor et al. (2010))

Using:

Rating:

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

Oral reading fluency outcomes—Statistically significant positive effect found for the domain
Outcome measure	Comparison	Sample	Intervention mean	Comparison mean	Significant?	Improvement index
Analytic Reading Inventory-Primary-Level Passage	Practice reading aloud difficult text—O'Connor et al. (2010) vs. Business as usual	Full sample; 43 students	89.48	64.78	Yes	41
Analytic Reading Inventory-Grade 1 Passage	Practice reading aloud difficult text—O'Connor et al. (2010) vs. Business as usual	Full sample; 43 students	70.01	50.47	Yes	33
Analytic Reading Inventory-Grade 2 Passages	Practice reading aloud difficult text—O'Connor et al. (2010) vs. Business as usual	Full sample; 43 students	72.65	55.91	Yes	30
Gray Oral Reading Test-Fluency	Practice reading aloud difficult text—O'Connor et al. (2010) vs. Business as usual	Full sample; 43 students	28.76	22.05	Yes	29

Reading Comprehension outcomes—Substantively important positive effect found for the domain
Outcome measure	Comparison	Period	Sample	Intervention mean	Comparison mean	Significant?	Improvement index	Evidence tier
Gray Oral Reading Test-Comprehension	Practice reading aloud difficult text—O'Connor et al. (2010) vs. Business as usual	0 Days	Full sample; 43 students	16.37	14.26	No	--
WRMT-R - Passage Comprehension subtest	Practice reading aloud difficult text—O'Connor et al. (2010) vs. Business as usual	0 Days	Full sample; 43 students	15.86	14.01	No	--

Word reading outcomes—Substantively important positive effect found for the domain
Outcome measure	Comparison	Period	Sample	Intervention mean	Comparison mean	Significant?	Improvement index	Evidence tier
Woodcock Reading Mastery Test - Revised: Word Identification	Practice reading aloud difficult text—O'Connor et al. (2010) vs. Business as usual	0 Days	Full sample; 43 students	51.49	47.68	No	--
Woodcock Reading Master Test, Revised - Word Attack	Practice reading aloud difficult text—O'Connor et al. (2010) vs. Business as usual	0 Days	Full sample; 43 students	19.69	17.56	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.

21% English language learners
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West

Study Details

Setting

The study takes place in five schools within a school district in the southwestern U.S. The two interventions involved one-on-one instruction between a student and an adult listener.

Study sample

The students were from a school district in the southwestern U.S. and 21% of the study sample were English learners.

Intervention Group

(1) There are two interventions: one involved practice reading aloud with independent reading level passages and the other involves reading aloud with or difficult level passages of text. (2) For the study, participants in the intervention groups received 15 minutes of practice reading aloud to a trained adult listener three times per week for 20 weeks. (3) Participants in the Independent group read fiction and nonfiction books where they are expected to have word reading accuracy in the range of 92% to 100% correct. (4) Participants in the Difficult group read fiction and nonfiction books where they are expected to have word reading accuracy in the range of 80% to 90% correct. (5) Although there is no mention of a formative assessment, reading materials were changed if they were found to be too easy or too difficult based on the student's condition. (6) The reading materials were also selected based on student interest. (7) The students' accuracy was checked at least once a week to insure compliance with the "independent" and "difficult" reading levels. (8) The trained adult listeners would pronounce and/or define words the students could not read, but did not offer any specific decoding strategies for the words. (9) There is no mention of scripted components or a home component.

Comparison Group

(1) The comparison condition was business as usual (no intervention). (2) All schools involved in the study used Houghton Mifflin Reading: A Legacy of Literacy series as the reading curriculum.

Support for implementation

The tests were administered by doctoral students who were blind to study condition of the students. The adult listeners who administered the interventions were trained by the lead author in a 2 hour session. These tutors were observed by the lead author and doctoral students during the first two treatment days and were corrected for errors in their implementation of the interventions. Tutors were observed once a week for the remainder of the study.

Improvement in Reading Rate under Independent and Difficult Text Levels: Influences on Word and Comprehension Skills [Reading aloud difficult text vs. business as usual]