Reading Comprehension Interventions Research Articles

Reading Comprehension Interventions for Middle School Students With Learning Disabilities

The authors conducted a synthesis of studies of reading comprehension interventions for middle school students (Grades 6–8) identified with a learning disability. They identified 12 studies between 1979 and 2009 with treatment and comparison designs and 2 single-participant studies. Findings from the studies indicate large effect sizes for researcher-developed comprehension measures. Few studies (n = 4) reported standardized measures of reading comprehension, which indicated medium effect sizes. The majority of study treatments (n = 13) utilized strategy instruction related to main idea or summarization.

The Effects of the Paraphrasing Strategy on the Reading Comprehension of Young Students

Reading comprehension is an important component of academic success and a skill required for many activities in school. However, little is known about effective reading comprehension interventions for younger students. This study investigated the effects of the paraphrasing strategy taught using the self-regulated strategy development model. Participants were six third grade students identified as fluent readers who experienced difficulty with comprehension. All instruction for the six participants was one on one. Results indicate that the use of the RAP paraphrasing strategy increased reading comprehension as measured by the percentage of text recall and short-answer questions (RAP is a three-step strategy: Read a paragraph, Ask myself “What was the main idea and two details?” and Put it into my own words). Ideas for future research and implications are discussed.

Teaching Children with Autism to Read for Meaning: Challenges and Possibilities

The purpose of this literature review is to examine what makes reading for understanding especially challenging for children on the autism spectrum, most of whom are skilled at decoding and less skilled at comprehension. This paper first summarizes the research on reading comprehension with a focus on the cognitive skills and processes that are involved in gaining meaning from text and then reviews studies of reading comprehension deficits in children on the spectrum. The paper concludes with a review of reading comprehension interventions for children on the spectrum. These children can especially benefit from interventions addressing particular cognitive processes, such as locating antecedent events, generating and answering questions, locating referents, and rereading to repair understanding.

Reading Comprehension Instruction for Students With Learning Disabilities, 1995—2006: A Meta-Analysis

Meta-analysis procedures were employed to synthesize findings of research for improving reading comprehension of students with learning disabilities published in the decade following previous meta-analytic investigations. Forty studies, published between 1995 and 2006, were identified and coded. Nearly 2,000 students served as participants. Interventions were classified as fundamental reading skills instruction, text enhancements, and questioning/strategy instruction—including those that incorporated peer-mediated instruction and self-regulation. Mean weighted effect sizes were obtained for criterion-referenced measures: .69 for treatment effects, .69 for maintenance effects, and .75 for generalization effects. For norm-referenced tests, the mean effect size was .52 for treatment effects. These outcomes were somewhat lower than but generally consistent with those of previous meta-analyses in their conclusion that reading comprehension interventions have generally been very effective. Higher outcomes were noted for interventions that were implemented by researchers. Implications for practice and further research are discussed.

Reading comprehension: Developmental processes, individual differences, and interventions.

Research on the typical development of reading comprehension, individual differences in comprehension, and reading comprehension interventions is less common than research on word reading. The authors present an overview of research on the development of reading comprehension skills and sources of individual differences in comprehension with reference to cognitive models of comprehension. Methodological issues particular to developmental and individual difference research on comprehension are also described. The article ends with a selective review of research programmes that illustrate effective comprehension interventions for typically developing children and for children who struggle to understand what they read.

Reading Comprehension in Adolescents with LD: What We Know; What We Need to Learn

The changing job market requires a sophisticated array of literacy skills that adolescents with learning disabilities reading below grade level have not yet acquired. This summary of the research on reading comprehension highlights emerging findings and related instructional conditions necessary to achieve optimal student outcomes with limited instructional time. Limitations in the existing evidence base are addressed via four factors for future research and development agendas: (a) use theory to inform research and practice, (b) study the role that dosage plays as an independent variable, (c) study tiered models of instruction that are applicable for use in middle and high school settings, and (d) study factors that can enhance scaling of reading comprehension interventions.

Effects on Science Summarization of a Reading Comprehension Intervention for Adolescents with Behavior and Attention Disorders

Sixty-three adolescent boys with behavioral disorders (BD), 31 of whom had comorbid attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), participated in a self-regulated strategy development intervention called Think Before Reading, Think While Reading, Think After Reading, With Written Summarization (TWA-WS). TWA-WS adapted Linda Masons TWA intervention by adding written summarization, focusing on self-monitoring, and using only science text. TWA-WS participants showed significantly greater gains than a matched comparison group, which practiced literacy tasks with the same text, on reading comprehension as measured through written summarization (η2 = .42). The increases for TWA-WS generalized both to social studies text and to a more complex composing-from-sources task. Effects of comorbid ADHD appeared on generalization and maintenance (d = 0.73 to 1.49) but not posttest measures.

Effects of Reading Comprehension Interventions for Students with Learning Disabilities

We examined 48 studies of interventions designed to affect the reading comprehension of students with learning disabilities and coded their characteristics and effect sizes. Our analyses revealed that students who received the researchers' experimental methods obtained reading comprehension scores that were higher than those of 87% of students in comparison groups. Strong effects were more likely when students' performance was assessed on lower level comprehension measures, when the study author delivered the interventions, and when the experimental students' performance was compared to that of students who did not receive any special intervention. These results indicate that although effective reading comprehension interventions exist, there are gaps between their use in research and practice.