Intensive Reading Intervention Research Articles

Understanding Unresponsiveness to Tier 2 Reading Intervention

The purpose of the current study was to examine academic and cognitive profiles of first graders who responded adequately and inadequately to intensive small-group reading intervention (Tier 2), as well as assess how these profiles differ based on the criteria used for classification of unresponsiveness. Nonresponders were identified using two different methods: (a) reading composite with weighted standardized scores for untimed word identification and word attack, timed sight word reading and decoding, and reading comprehension at the end of first grade ( n = 23; 18.4%), and (b) local norms on first grade word identification fluency (WIF; n = 31; 24.8%). Repeated measures ANOVAs were used to assess the difference between responders and nonresponders on four separate profiles (i.e., academic and cognitive profiles, with groups identified using reading composite and WIF criteria for unresponsiveness). Significant level effects were found using the first-grade reading composite and the WIF criteria, indicating that the groups differ from one another across domains. Interestingly, there were only significant shape effects found when using the WIF criteria, suggesting relative strengths and weaknesses distinguish the groups. These findings suggest potentially important considerations related to identification and placement of students in appropriately intensive and targeted interventions.

REMEDIATING READING DIFFICULTIES IN A RESPONSE TO INTERVENTION MODEL WITH SECONDARY STUDENTS.

The research on Response to Intervention (RtI) with secondary students is scant; however, a recently conducted, multiyear, large-scale implementation of RtI with middle-school students provides findings that inform practices and future directions for research. This article provides an overview of the findings from each of the 3 years of an intensive, tiered reading intervention with middle-school students. In Year 1, students were provided with a Tier 1 and Tier 2 intervention. In Year 2, minimal responders were provided with another year of intervention (Tier 3), and again in Year 3, minimal responders to the 2-year intervention were provided with a third year of intervention (Tier 4). Using students' responsiveness to intervention as a prerequisite for a subsequent year of intensive instruction, minimal responders received a total of up to 3 years of intervention. The efficacy of an enhanced primary (Tier 1), secondary (Tier 2), and tertiary (Tier 3) intervention, and an individualized, intensive reading intervention (Tier 4) are discussed, as well as the logistics of implementing an RtI model with secondary students.

Effects of Intensive Reading Intervention for Eighth-Grade Students With Persistently Inadequate Response to Intervention

The authors report the effects of a yearlong, very small-group, intensive reading intervention for eighth-grade students with serious reading difficulties who had demonstrated low response to intervention (RTI) in both Grades 6 and 7. At the beginning of Grade 6, a cohort of students identified as having reading difficulties were randomized to treatment or comparison conditions. Treatment group students received researcher-provided reading intervention in Grade 6, which continued in Grade 7 for those with low response to intervention; comparison students received no researcher-provided intervention. Participants in the Grade 8 study were members of the original treatment (N = 28) and comparison (N = 13) conditions who had failed to pass a state-mandated reading comprehension test in both Grades 6 and 7. In Grade 8, treatment group students received a 50-minute, daily, individualized, intensive reading intervention in groups of two to four students per teacher. The results showed that students in the treatment condition demonstrated significantly higher scores than comparison students on standardized measures of comprehension (effect size = 1.20) and word identification (effect size = 0.49), although most continued to lack grade-level proficiency in reading despite 3 years of intervention. Findings from this study provide a rationale for intensive intervention for middle school students with severe reading difficulties.

Gray matter volume changes following reading intervention in dyslexic children

Studies in children and adults with the reading disability developmental dyslexia have shown behavioral improvements after reading intervention. In another line of work, it has been shown that intensive training in a variety of cognitive and sensorimotor skills can result in changes in gray matter volume (GMV). This study examined changes in GMV following intensive reading intervention in children with dyslexia using voxel-based morphometry (VBM). Eleven dyslexic children underwent an eight week training focused on mental imagery, articulation and tracing of letters, groups of letters and words, which resulted in significant gains in reading skills. This was followed by an eight week null period (control) where no intervention was administered and no further significant gains in reading were observed. Structural scans were obtained before the intervention, after the intervention and after the null period. GMV increases between the first two time points were found in the left anterior fusiform gyrus/hippocampus, left precuneus, right hippocampus and right anterior cerebellum. However these areas did not change between time points two and three (control period), suggesting that the changes were specific to the intervention period. These results demonstrate for the first time that (1) training-induced changes in GMV can be observed in a pediatric sample and (2) reading improvements induced by intervention are accompanied by GMV changes.

Tier 3 Interventions for Students With Significant Reading Problems

This article provides an overview of research on intensive reading interventions to inform Tier 3 instruction for students with reading disabilities. Tier 3 interventions are typically provided to those students who demonstrate inadequate progress after receiving less intensive Tier 2 interventions. A conceptual overview of Tier 3 interventions within a Response to Intervention model is provided, along with a review of research on effectiveness of instructional practices for students with significant reading difficulties.

The Influence of Fidelity of Implementation on the Reading Outcomes of Middle School Students Experiencing Reading Difficulties

The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which two specific elements of fidelity of implementation (i.e., adherence and quality of delivery) enhanced or constrained the effects of a reading intervention for middle school students experiencing reading difficulties. A total of 281 middle school students with reading difficulties received an intensive reading intervention (i.e., Corrective Reading Decoding strand) delivered by trained school staff ( n = 21) at three middle schools. Although students receiving the Corrective Reading Decoding strand made statistically significant ( p < .001) improvements in their basic reading skills and passage comprehension overall, variations in student gains were found. Overall fidelity of implementation accounted for 22% and 18% of the variance in the gains in basic reading skills and passage comprehension of middle school students with reading difficulties, respectively ( p < .05). Two teacher actions, following the lesson format as designed and reteaching lessons when needed, predicted student basic reading and passage comprehension skills above and beyond other teacher actions ( p < .05). Results, implications, and limitations are discussed.

Classroom Observations and Effects of Reading Interventions for Students at Risk for Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

This study investigated the effects of small-group reading interventions, implemented within a schoolwide positive behavior support model, on elementary students with and without risk for emotional and behavior disorders. Participating schools and students were part of a larger randomized controlled group study. A subset of the larger study, four experimental and four comparison schools, participated in this current study. Participants included 117 first- through third-grade students who were identified through a systematic screening process as having reading or behavior/reading risk. Direct observation and reading performance measures yielded several important outcomes. Students receiving small-group interventions within the experimental group spent more time in small-group instruction and during that instruction were more actively engaged in reading aloud and academic responding. These differences translated into differential gains between groups on the Dynamic Indicators of Early Literacy Skills—DIBELS nonsense word fluency and oral reading fluency measures. In addition, with intensive small-group reading interventions, students with the combined behavior/reading risk were as responsive to the intervention as students with reading risk alone. No differences were recognized for student conduct or for reading outcomes on the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

Exploring the Relative Effectiveness of Reading Interventions for High School Students

The purpose of this research was to explore the relative effectiveness of intensive reading interventions for struggling high school readers. A yearlong randomized control study was conducted to estimate causal effects, as measured by the criterion-referenced state assessment test, for 1,265 ninth-grade students in 89 classes across 7 high schools in a large school district. Students in the high risk group and the moderate risk group were randomly assigned to one of four intensive reading interventions (three new interventions and a “business as usual” control condition.) Results indicated that for all four interventions, gains made by students in the high risk group exceeded the benchmark for expected annual growth. For the moderate risk group, random effects mixed modeling showed that reliable differences were observed in the state outcome gain scores between two of the intensive interventions and the “business as usual” control condition (Glass's adjusted Δ = .27, .30).

Response to Early Reading Intervention Examining Higher and Lower Responders

This study examined the effects of an intensive reading intervention for students demonstrating minimal response to previous, less intensive intervention. Participants received intervention for 13 to 26 weeks in first grade. In second grade, students were screened and those meeting the benchmark (higher responders) did not receive further intervention, whereas those who did not meet benchmark (lower responders) received an additional 26 weeks of a more intensive intervention. Using a regression-discontinuity design, lower and higher responders were compared on several measures of reading. Significant findings for reading comprehension and word reading were demonstrated in favor of the lower responder group. No significant results were shown for reading fluency. Teachers' perspectives of the lower responders' academic competence were significantly lower than those of higher responders.

Lessons Learned: Barriers and Solutions for Conducting Reading Investigations in Juvenile Corrections Settings

Few research studies have investigated the effectiveness of instructional strategies for students in juvenile corrections. The dearth of research on effective instruction for this population may be due in part to difficulties encountered in carrying out methodologically rigorous studies in these settings. This article reports barriers and challenges we experienced while conducting a multi-site intensive reading intervention study in juvenile corrections. We discuss the issues we encountered, including adequacy of collaboration with administrators, facility staff, and research staff; defining roles and responsibilities of research staff; sampling and attrition; securing appropriate instructional settings; and identifying instrumentation and materials. For each area, we discuss the outcomes and make recommendations for future research.

Mission Possible: States Take on Adolescent Literacy

IN October 2005, the National Governors Association published Reading to Achieve: A Governors Guide to Adolescent Literacy, asserting that poor readers in elementary and middle school are likely to struggle in high school and are most at risk of dropping out before graduation. The report argued that the eight million struggling readers in grades 4-12 needed extra support and that governors were uniquely positioned to raise awareness of the adolescent literacy problem in their states. The NGA recommended five strategies to improve achievement in adolescent literacy: 1) build support for a state focus on adolescent literacy, 2) raise literacy expectations across grades and curricula, 3) encourage and support school and district literacy plans, 4) build educators' capacity to provide adolescent literacy instruction, and 5) measure progress in adolescent literacy at the school, district, and state levels. By the end of the 2006 legislative sessions, a few states had enacted policies that addressed the quality of reading instruction across all grades. Florida's H.B. 7087 represents a continuation of the A+ education reform begun by Gov. Jeb Bush in 1999, but it is sometimes difficult to know whether these new policies resulted from gubernatorial proposals or from legislative leadership. They are not the first policies to address the quality of reading instruction, nor will they be the last. Some, however, appear to include components that parallel the strategies recommended by the NGA. Strategy 1. Build support for a state focus on adolescent literacy. Section 8 of Florida's H.B. 7087 creates the Just Read, Florida! office within the department of education to provide a state focus that includes adolescent literacy. The office is charged with training reading coaches who are highly effective and hold proper credentials, creating multiple designations of effective reading instruction, and training K-12 teachers and school principals on effective content-area-specific reading strategies. For secondary teachers, the emphasis is to be on helping students learn to read technical texts. The bill requires local boards to adopt policies in a number of areas, including establishing procedures for placing and promoting students in grades 6-12 who enter Florida schools from out of state or from foreign countries; devising alternative methods for students to demonstrate competency in required courses, with special support for students who have been retained; designing applied, integrated, and combined courses that provide flexibility for students to enroll in courses that are creative and meet individual learning styles and student needs; creating credit recovery courses; and providing intensive reading and math intervention courses to students whose performance on state assessments is below par. Strategy 2. Raise literacy expectations across grades and curricula. The Just Read, Florida! office is required to offer parents information and strategies to enable them to help their children in reading in the content areas. The Florida bill also creates an annual district allocation to provide comprehensive, research-based reading instruction to students in grades K-12. Funds may be used to pay for highly qualified reading coaches, professional development that includes strategies to teach reading in content areas and emphasizes technical and informational text, summer reading camps for students who score low on the reading assessment, and supplemental instructional materials that are grounded in reading research. Kentucky's S.B. 130 requires a great deal of reporting across the grade levels. For example, parents must be given information on their fifth-graders' readiness in reading and math. There must be a report for each student who takes a high school or college readiness exam, and that report must provide test data and a judgment concerning whether the student has met expectations for each standard assessed. …

Examining the Effects of Phono-Graphix on the Remediation of Reading Skills of Students with Disabilities: A Program Evaluation

The purpose of this program evaluation was to examine the effects of Phono-Graphix, an intensive tertiary-level reading intervention, on the basic reading skills of 16 students aged 6 to 17 years who received special education services. Instruction was delivered one-on-one or in small groups of two or three students. Instruction lasted 8 weeks. Students were pre- and posttested using the Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery-3rd Edition: Tests of Achievement (WJ-III ACH). Results of this program evaluation indicated that the reading skills of students with disabilities improved. Statistically significant gains were made by the elementary and upper elementary/secondary students. The effect size gains were all above .39. Results are discussed with regard to effective interventions for students with reading disabilities and implications for future research.

An Evaluation of Intensive Intervention for Students with Persistent Reading Difficulties

To evaluate the effects of an intensive tertiary reading intervention, 27 students with severe reading difficulties and disabilities, 14 of whom had demonstrated an inadequate response to 1-2 tiers of prior reading instruction, received a 16-week intervention package involving decoding and fluency skills. The decoding intervention was provided for 2 hours per day for 8 weeks and was based on the Phono-Graphix program. The fluency intervention followed the decoding intervention and involved 1 hour of daily instruction for 8 weeks based on the Read Naturally program. The 16-week intervention resulted in significant improvement in reading decoding, fluency, and comprehension. Although individual responses to the intervention were variable, 12 of the 27 students showed a significant response to these interventions. Students who had participated in previous Tier 1 plus Tier 2 interventions but remained impaired had a stronger response to intervention in the current study than students who had previously participated only in Tier 1 intervention and students who had not received prior intervention outside of special education.

Beginning Reading Intervention as Inoculation or Insulin

This study examined the first-grade reading progress of children who participated in an intensive beginning reading intervention in kindergarten. Specifically, the study investigated whether kindergarten intervention could prevent first-grade reading difficulties, or produce an "inoculation" effect, for some children under certain instructional conditions. Participants included children at risk for developing reading difficulties who received a 7-month beginning reading intervention in kindergarten. In October of first grade, 59 children who had achieved criterion levels on measures of phonological awareness and alphabetic knowledge were randomly assigned to one of two types of first-grade reading instruction: (a) code-based classroom instruction and a supplemental maintenance intervention, or (b) only code-based classroom instruction. February posttest measures assessed oral reading fluency, word reading, nonword reading, and comprehension. Between-group analyses indicated that instructional groups did not differ on any posttest measure. The students' absolute levels of achievement were compared to national and local normative samples. These results indicated that between 75% and 100% of students in both conditions attained posttest levels and demonstrated growth comparable to their average-achieving peers. These results support the hypothesis that strong responders to kindergarten intervention can experience an inoculation effect through the middle of first grade with research-validated classroom reading instruction.

Effectiveness of Supplemental Reading Instruction for Second-Grade English Language Learners with Reading Difficulties

The effectiveness of an intervention that involved both English as a second language strategies and effective reading practices (based on research with monolingual English speakers) for English language (EL) learners at risk for reading problems and learning to read in English is described. 26 second-grade students who were both EL learners and at risk for reading difficulties were identified and provided an intensive reading intervention in English. Students received 13 weeks (58 sessions) of supplemental reading instruction daily for 30 minutes per day individually or in groups of 2 or 3. Students' oral reading fluency, phoneme segmentation fluency, nonsense word reading, and reading comprehension were assessed prior to, immediately after, and on 2 subsequent occasions following intervention (4 weeks and 4 months). Students made significant gains from pre- to posttest on the outcome measures: word attack, passage comprehension, phoneme segmentation fluency, and oral reading fluency. The largest standard...

Intensive Intervention in Reading Fluency for At-Risk Beginning Spanish Readers

A study was conducted using a single case, multiple baseline (across subjects) design to study an intensive reading intervention among low-achieving at-risk students in first and second grade Spanish/English bilingual classrooms. The intervention, involving three research-supported techniques, was conducted for 45 minutes per day, three days per week, over 12 weeks, with 74 students from four classrooms (analyses included 53 students with complete data). Dependent measures were oral reading fluency scores and comprehension scores from post-reading questions, collected every two weeks from equivalent probes. It was concluded that implementing intensive reading fluency interventions in bilingual classrooms is feasible and valuable if conducted with fidelity, and if students are highly engaged.

Commentary: Four Meta-Analyses and Some General Observations

Previous articleNext article No AccessCommentary: Four Meta-Analyses and Some General ObservationsJoanna P. WilliamsJoanna P. Williams Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Elementary School Journal Volume 101, Number 3Jan., 2001Special Issue: Instructional Interventions for Students with Learning Disabilities Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/499672 Views: 4Total views on this site Citations: 3Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 2001 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Dennis S. Davis Multiple comprehension strategies instruction in the intermediate grades: three remarks about content and pedagogy in the intervention literature, Review of Education 1, no.22 (Oct 2013): 194–224.https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3005Sharon Vaughn, Jade Wexler, Audrey Leroux, Greg Roberts, Carolyn Denton, Amy Barth, Jack Fletcher Effects of Intensive Reading Intervention for Eighth-Grade Students With Persistently Inadequate Response to Intervention, Journal of Learning Disabilities 45, no.66 (Apr 2011): 515–525.https://doi.org/10.1177/0022219411402692Sharon Vaughn, Jade Wexler, Greg Roberts, Amy A. Barth, Paul T. Cirino, Melissa A. Romain, David Francis, Jack Fletcher, Carolyn A. Denton Effects of Individualized and Standardized Interventions on Middle School Students with Reading Disabilities, Exceptional Children 77, no.44 (Jul 2011): 391–407.https://doi.org/10.1177/001440291107700401