The Effects of an Intensive Reading Intervention for Ninth Graders with very Low Reading Comprehension

Abstract

This experimental study examined the efficacy of a multicomponent reading intervention compared to a control condition on the reading comprehension of adolescent students with low reading comprehension (more than 1½ standard deviations below normative sample). Ninth–grade students were randomly assigned to treatment ( n = 25) and comparison ( n = 19). Reading teachers provided instruction for 90–min, five times every two weeks for approximately 80 sessions. Treatment effects for each outcome measure were estimated using repeated measure of analysis of covariance for measures of reading comprehension and fluency. Results indicate no statistically significant differences between treatment and comparison conditions. Repeated–measures analyses of variance between students with lower and higher decoding skills indicated a statistically significant interaction between treatment condition and decoding ability on the WJ–III PC and Bridge–IT, with large effect sizes ( ηp2. 16 and. 12, respectively), indicating that treatment was differentially beneficial for students with higher decoding skills.