Engaging Struggling Early Readers to Promote Reading Success: A Pilot Study of Reading by Design

Abstract

In this study, we piloted a Tier 2 intervention designed to improve reading skills among struggling early readers using an intervention that included SRA Reading Mastery, listening-while-reading activities, strategies to increase motivation and engagement in reading, and parent involvement in reading homework. The study included 6 students in Grade 1 and 5 students in Grade 2 (N = 11), all of whom were failing to meet grade-level reading benchmarks. We delivered the intervention in small, grade-based groups for 35 min 4 times per week for 4 months. Pretest and posttest performance on the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests-Third Edition using grade-based standard scores indicated significant improvement on the Total Reading cluster (p = .0017, d = 1.23) and the following subtests: Oral Reading Fluency (p = .0095, d = 1.21), Word Attack (p = .0064, d = 0.89), Passage Comprehension (p = .0207, d = 0.66), and Word Identification (p = .0245, d = 0.93). We discuss implications for practice and future research.