Study: 89381

Practice Guide

Review Details

Reviewed: November 2021

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 Reading intervention (Stevens et al. (2020)))

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

Reading Comprehension outcomes—Statistically significant positive effect found for the domain
Outcome measure	Comparison	Period	Sample	Intervention mean	Comparison mean	Significant?	Improvement index
Structure Identification and Main Idea Generation Test (SIMIG) - Structure identification component	Reading intervention (Stevens et al. (2020)) vs. Business as usual	2 Weeks	Full sample; 61 students	5.18	3.70	Yes	28
Structure Identification and Main Idea Generation Test (SIMIG) - Main idea generation component	Reading intervention (Stevens et al. (2020)) vs. Business as usual	2 Weeks	Full sample; 61 students	9.63	6.52	Yes	25
Strategy Use Measure (SUM) - Question and main idea generation	Reading intervention (Stevens et al. (2020)) vs. Business as usual	2 Weeks	Full sample; 61 students	8.10	6.10	Yes	20
Strategy Use Measure (SUM) – Main idea identification	Reading intervention (Stevens et al. (2020)) vs. Business as usual	2 Weeks	Full sample; 61 students	2.00	1.58	No	--
Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests (GMRT-4) reading comprehension subtest	Reading intervention (Stevens et al. (2020)) vs. Business as usual	2 Weeks	Full sample; 61 students	81.62	83.48	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.

63% English language learners
Female: 37%
Male: 63%
Urban
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South

Race
Asian		2%
Black		8%
Other or unknown		90%

Ethnicity
Hispanic		90%
Not Hispanic or Latino		10%

Study Details

Setting

The study included fourth- and fifth-grade students who were identified as struggling readers from two urban, public charter schools in the south-central region of the United States.

Study sample

Sample characteristics were based on the randomized sample of 62 students (rather than the analytic sample of 61 students). The sample included 23 females (37.1 percent) and 39 males (62.9 percent). Students were in either fourth grade (28 students, 45.2 percent) or fifth grade (34 students, 54.8 percent). The sample included 56 Hispanic students (90.3 percent), 5 African American students (8.1 percent), 1 Asian student (1.6 percent), 39 English learners (62.9), 54 students who qualified for free or reduced-price lunch (87.1 percent), and 2 students with a learning disability (3.2 percent). Students were on average ten years old (SD=0.74). The average score on the 2017 State Reading Test was 1342.8 (SD=65.7).

Intervention Group

The study examined the effectiveness of a reading intervention for students struggling with reading. The intervention targeted paraphrasing and text structure instruction. More specifically, the intervention sought to teach students how to generate main ideas of longer sections of text and to use text structure instruction to select, chunk, support the generation of main ideas (which can free up cognitive resources for text processing), and support greater understanding of text content. The intervention was provided by five tutors, including four doctoral students in special education and one Ph.D. in early education. In groups of 4 to 6 students (30 groups), intervention group students participated in 25 lessons, each about 45 minutes in duration. Materials for the intervention were drawn from Readworks.org, QuickReads, and three National Geographic leveled readers. Materials represented targeted text structures, were aligned with fourth- and fifth-grade social studies and science content, and represented third- through fifth-grade reading levels and Lexile levels ranging from 400 to 1070. Texts were selected such that they increased in reading level, length, and complexity over the course of the intervention period. Lessons combine text structure and paraphrasing instruction. Each lesson included an opportunity to share the application of skills learned (3 minutes), background knowledge building with a visual (5 minutes), text reading (15-20 minutes), explicit instruction on generating main ideas while reading (15-20 minutes), and fix-up practices and lesson review (2 minutes).

Comparison Group

Comparison group students at one school attended business-as-usual science instruction (fourth graders) or social studies instruction (fifth graders) while intervention group students participated in the intervention. Ten of those 24 students received additional reading intervention during the school day, which consisted of either explicit decoding instruction for 45-minute sessions five times per week (seven students) or explicit decoding instruction for 90-minute sessions five times per week (three students). At the second school, comparison group students participated in after-school activities while the intervention group students participated in the intervention. Of the seven comparison group students at the second school, three received Tier 2 small group reading intervention and three received Tier 3 small group reading intervention during the English language arts block during 30- to 45-minute sessions, 3 to 4 times per week.

Support for implementation

The lead researcher provided a four-hour training to the tutors that focused on the rationale of the study, use of the materials, and the practices. Intervention lessons were audio-recorded. Implementation fidelity was rated based on procedural fidelity, overall quality, and dosage. The first author trained two research assistants to conduct fidelity ratings. Of the total observations, 20 percent were randomly selected from within each tutoring group for the fidelity ratings. Also, the first author listened to audio recordings of each tutoring group after lesson 8 and lesson 16 and then provided feedback on implementation and instructional quality.

The Effects of a Paraphrasing and Text Structure Intervention on the Main Idea Generation and Reading Comprehension of Students with Reading Disabilities in Grades 4 and 5 [Paraphrasing and text structure instruction vs. business as usual]