Cognitive and Linguistic Mediators of Response to Intensive Interventions in Reading for English Learners At-Risk for Learning Disabilities

The proposed research will use RDD to investigate cognitive and linguistics factors that mediate the impact of an intensive, comprehensive reading comprehension intervention for ELs at risk for LDs. Approximately 350 third- and fourth-grade ELs in participating schools will be screened using a measure of reading fluency and comprehension. Students scoring below the 20th percentile of the sample on the measure will be assigned to the intervention group and all other students will comprise the comparison group. Students in the intervention group will receive an adapted version of the SRA Early Interventions in Reading, a set of comprehensive and explicit reading interventions developed for and validated with ELs in kindergarten through third grade that address phonological awareness, phonics and word study, vocabulary, fluency with text, and reading comprehension. The PI will adapt the intervention to match the grade and skills of the targeted sample, increase the focus on building critical academic language, and include structured opportunities for students to engage in discussion of text and content. The program will be implemented in small groups of about four students over a period of 16 weeks by intervention tutors. Data on implementation fidelity will be collected and coded from audiotaped intervention sessions. Before and immediately after the intervention, all students will be administered a battery of measures in English to assess reading comprehension as well as potential mediators of intervention response (i.e., vocabulary, word reading and fluency, inferencing, and reading strategies). Analyses will be conducted to determine the impact of the intervention on ELs and the cognitive and linguistic factors that mediate response to the intervention in reading comprehension. Because previous studies have not investigated mediation within the context of an experiment using RDD, the PI will work with mentors to extend a basic mediation framework to account for the complexities of the research design and data.