Code-oriented instruction for kindergarten students at risk for reading difficulties: a replication and comparison of instructional groupings

The purposes of this study were to replicate previous research on phonics-based tutoring in kindergarten and to compare treatment effects for students who received individual instruction compared to instruction in dyads. Thirty classroom teachers from 13 urban elementary schools referred at-risk students for participation. Students who met screening criteria were quasi-randomly assigned, within classroom, to one of three conditions: individual tutoring (n = 22), tutoring in dyads (n = 32), or no tutoring (n = 22, classroom instruction only). Twenty-one paraeducators provided 18 weeks of explicit instruction in phonemic skills and the alphabetic code to students during the latter half of kindergarten. Multilevel model results showed that tutored students outperformed non-tutored controls on posttest measures of phonological awareness, word reading accuracy, oral reading fluency, spelling, and comprehension. However, no significant differences were found between the two tutored groups on any measure, suggesting that code-oriented tutoring for pairs of students is a viable alternative to the gold standard of individual instruction.     

Intensive remedial instruction for children with severe reading disabilities: immediate and long-term outcomes from two instructional approaches

Sixty children with severe reading disabilities were randomly assigned to two instructional programs that incorporated principles of effective instruction but differed in depth and extent of instruction in phonemic awareness and phonemic decoding skills. All children received 67.5 hours of one-to-one instruction in two 50-minute sessions per day for 8 weeks. Both instructional programs produced very large improvements in generalized reading skills that were stable over a 2-year follow-up period. When compared to the growth in broad reading ability that the participants made during their previous 16 months in learning disabilities resource rooms, their growth during the intervention produced effect sizes of 4.4 for one of the interventions and 3.9 for the other. Although the children's average scores on reading accuracy and comprehension were in the average range at the end of the follow-up period, measures of reading rate showed continued severe impairment for most of the children. Within 1 year following the intervention, 40% of the children were found to be no longer in need of special education services. The two methods of instruction were not differentially effective for children who entered the study with different levels of phonological ability, and the best overall predictors of long-term growth were resource room teacher ratings of attention/behavior, general verbal ability, and prior levels of component reading skills.     

Academic responding during instruction and reading outcomes for kindergarten students at-risk for reading difficulties

The purpose of this study was to investigate the academic responding of students at-risk for reading difficulties in beginning reading instruction. Opportunities for kindergarten students at-risk for reading difficulties to respond academically during teacher-facilitated reading instruction in the general education classroom were examined in relation to student reading achievement as well as social behaviors. Student academic responding during teacher-facilitated instruction significantly predicted end of year reading achievement. Teacher perceptions of students’ social skills (positive correlation) and problem behaviors (negative correlation) were significantly correlated with academic responding. When academic responding and teacher perceptions of social behaviors were examined together, only teacher perceptions of academic competence and problem behaviors predicted spring outcomes.     

Enhancing the early literacy development of children at risk for reading difficulties

Abstract

This paper reviews the dynamic and interactive links between the development of children's language, phonological awareness, and reading. Some of the key issues explored are procedures to enhance children's language development, decoding and word recognition skills, along with some relevant assessment and programming strategies that can facilitate children's early reading development. In particular, the paper supports the suggestion that deficits in phonological awareness are often a consequence of slow vocabulary development (a classic marker of language delay) and that teachers need to be able to adapt their language and dialogue interactions for children with language delays.     

Computer-assisted remedial reading intervention for school beginners at risk for reading disability

The aim of the longitudinal study was to investigate whether a computer application designed for remedial reading training can enhance letter knowledge, reading accuracy, fluency, and spelling of at-risk children. The participants, 7-year-old Finnish school beginners (N=166), were assigned to 1 of 3 groups: (a) regular remedial reading intervention (n=25), (b) computer-assessed reading intervention (n=25), and (c) mainstream reading instruction (n=116). Based on the results, computer-assisted remedial reading intervention was highly beneficial, whereas regular type of intervention was less successful. The results indicated that at-risk children require computer-based letter-name and letter-sound training to acquire adequate decoding and spelling skills, and to reach the level of their non-at-risk peers.     

Early reading development in children at family risk for dyslexia

In a 3-year longitudinal study, middle- to upper-middle-class preschool children at high family risk (HR group, N = 67) and low family risk (LR group, N = 57) for dyslexia (or reading disability, RD), were evaluated yearly from before kindergarten to the end of second grade. Both phonological processing and literacy skills were tested at each of four time points. Consistent with the well-known familiarity of RD, 34% of the HR group compared with 6% of the LR group became RD. Participants who became RD showed deficits in both implicit and explicit phonological processing skills at all four time points, clearly indicating a broader phonological deficit than is often found at older ages. The predictors of literacy skill did not vary by risk group. Both risk groups underwent a similar developmental shift from letter-name knowledge to phoneme awareness as the main predictor of later literacy skill. This shift, however, occurred 2 years later in the HR group. Familial risk was continuous rather than discrete because HR children who did not become RD performed worse than LR non-RD children on some phonological and literacy measures. Finally, later RD could be predicted with moderate accuracy at age 5 years, with the strongest predictor being letter-name knowledge.     

Effects of tutoring in phonological and early reading skills on students at risk for reading disabilities

This study examined the effectiveness of nonprofessional tutors in a phonologically based reading treatment similar to those in which successful reading outcomes have been demonstrated. Participants were 23 first graders at risk for learning disability who received intensive one-to-one tutoring from noncertified tutors for 30 minutes, 4 days a week, for one school year. Tutoring included instruction in phonological skills, letter-sound correspondence, explicit decoding, rime analysis, writing, spelling, and reading phonetically controlled text. At year end, tutored students significantly outperformed untutored control students on measures of reading, spelling, and decoding. Effect sizes ranged from .42 to 1.24. Treatment effects diminished at follow-up at the end of second grade, although tutored students continued to significantly outperform untutored students in decoding and spelling. Findings suggest that phonologically based reading instruction for first graders at risk for learning disability can be delivered by nonteacher tutors. Our discussion addresses the character of reading outcomes associated with tutoring, individual differences in response to treatment, and the infrastructure required for nonprofessional tutoring programs.     

Responsiveness to mathematical problem-solving instruction: comparing students at risk of mathematics disability with and without risk of reading disability

This study assessed responsiveness to a 16-week mathematical problem-solving treatment as a function of students' risk for disability. Among 301 third graders, TerraNova scores were used to categorize students as at risk for both reading and mathematics disability (MDR/RDR; 20 control and 12 experimental), at risk for mathematics disability only (MDR-only; 5 and 8), at risk for reading disability only (RDR-only; 12 and 15), or not at risk (NDR; 60 and 69). Interactions among at-risk status, treatment, and time showed that as a function of treatment, MDR/RDR, MDR-only, and RDR-only students improved less than NDR students on computation and labeling, and MDR/RDR students improved less than all other groups on conceptual underpinnings. Exploratory regressions suggested that MDR/RDR students' math deficits or their underlying mechanisms explained a greater proportion of variance in responsiveness to problem-solving treatment than reading deficits or their underlying mechanisms.     

A synthesis of read-aloud interventions on early reading outcomes among preschool through third graders at risk for reading difficulties

A synthesis and meta-analysis of the extant research on the effects of storybook read-aloud interventions for children at risk for reading difficulties ages 3 to 8 is provided. A total of 29 studies met criteria for the synthesis, with 18 studies providing sufficient data for inclusion in the meta-analysis. Read-aloud instruction has been examined using dialogic reading; repeated reading of stories; story reading with limited questioning before, during, and/or after reading; computer-assisted story reading; and story reading with extended vocabulary activities. Significant, positive effects on children's language, phonological awareness, print concepts, comprehension, and vocabulary outcomes were found. Despite the positive effects for read-aloud interventions, only a small amount of outcome variance was accounted for by intervention type.     

Predictors for grade 6 reading in children at familial risk of dyslexia

The present study investigates whether grade 6 reading outcomes, reading fluency, and reading comprehension can be predicted by grade 3 reading fluency, familial risk of dyslexia (FR), and grade 3 reading related skills: rapid automatized naming (RAN), phonological awareness (PA), and vocabulary. In a sample of 150 children, of whom 83 had a parent with dyslexia, correlation and regression analyses were performed. FR, measured on a continuous scale, was by itself related to all outcomes. However, FR did not explain any variance on top of grade 3 reading fluency. Grade 3 reading fluency strongly predicted grade 6 reading fluency and was also related to reading comprehension. RAN improved the prediction of grade 6 reading fluency, though the additional explained variance was small. Vocabulary and PA fully explained the variance that grade 3 reading fluency explained in grade 6 reading comprehension. Vocabulary explained a substantial amount of variance in grade 6 reading comprehension making it an interesting clinical target. As we used continuous measures of reading fluency and FR, our findings are not biased by distinct diagnostic criteria.     

Effects of instruction on beginning reading skills in children at risk for reading disability

Children identified in kindergarten as being at risk for reading disability were taught in grades one and two using one of two methods of reading instruction, a structured phonics code-emphasis approach or an approach emphasizing use of context. At the end of first and second grade, children were tested on measures of achievement in word identification, word attack, passage comprehension and spelling. Those in the Code group earned uniformly higher scores on all achievement measures at the end of first and second grades. At the end of first grade, statistically significant differences between groups were found on nonword reading and spelling of phonetically regular words. At the end of second grade, significant differences were found in reading of polysyllabic real words and decoding of monosyllabic and polysyllabic nonsense words. It was concluded that reading instruction does have an important impact on acquisition of early reading skills, and that structured, systematic phonics instruction results in more favorable outcome than does a context emphasis approach.This research was supported by PHS Grant HD21887 to Bowman Gray School of Medicine and by PHS Grant NS19413 to UNC-Greensboro, Subcontract to Bowman Gray School of Medicine. Request for reprints should be addressed to Dr. Idalyn S. Brown, Section of Neuropsychology, Department of Neurology, Bowman Gray School of Medicine, 300 South Hawthorne Road, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 27103, USA.     

Early reading instruction for children with reading difficulties: meeting the needs of diverse learners

Several multiple-probe-across-participants design studies were employed to evaluate the effectiveness of a supplemental tutoring intervention using Read Well (Sprick, Howard, & Fidanque, 1998-2000). In Year 1, we conducted two studies with 7 first-, second-, and third-grade children (1 girl and 6 boys), who were classified as having learning disabilities, having attention-deficit disorder, or being English language learners and were identified by their teachers as poor readers. The results of the two studies indicated that 3 of the 5 children who received Read Well instruction showed improvement in passage fluency. Student performance on other measures of reading and comprehension was varied. Differences in student characteristics and in the amount of Read Well instruction received (2 to 7 weeks) seemed to account for the differences in performance. In Year 2, we implemented the same tutoring intervention for a longer duration (up to 16 weeks) and included 5 children in second and third grades (2 girls and 3 boys) with reading difficulties. Two of these children had previously participated in the Year 1 studies. The results indicated growth in reading, spelling, and comprehension for most children. Overall, the findings from Year 1 and 2 studies indicate the benefits of increased instructional intensity and duration for children who struggle with emerging reading skills.     

The development of children at familial risk for dyslexia: Birth to early school age

Children at risk for familial dyslexia (n = 107) and their controls (n = 93) have been followed from birth to school entry in the Jyvaskyla Longitudinal study of Dyslexia (JLD) on developmental factors linked to reading and dyslexia. At the point of school entry, the majority of the at-risk children displayed decoding ability that fell at least 1 SD below the mean of the control group. Measures of speech processing were the earliest indices to show both group differences in infancy and also significant predictive associations with reading acquisition. A number of measures of language, including phonological and morphological skill collected repeatedly from age three, revealed group differences and predictive correlations. Both the group differences and the predictive associations to later language and reading ability strengthened as a function of increasing age. The predictions, however, tend to be stronger and the spectrum of significant correlations wider in the at-risk group. These results are crucial to early identification and intervention of dyslexia in at-risk children.     

Effects of small-group reading instruction and curriculum differences for students most at risk in kindergartenL: two-year results for secondary- and tertiary-level interventions

This article describes the implementation of small-group reading instruction as secondary- and tertiary-level components of a three-tier model of prevention and intervention. The study consisted of 83 students who were targeted in the winter of kindergarten as being at high risk for reading failure. Intervention consisted of evidence-based curriculum delivered in groups of one to six students during 30- to 40-min sessions a minimum of three times per week over a 2-year period. Outcome data were collected for early literacy skills, using the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills and Woodcock Reading Mastery Test, with comparisons across the different curricula. Results indicated that students in the more directed, explicit intervention groups generally out-performed students in the comparison group. Implications for future research and practice implementing schoolwide three-tier prevention models are discussed.     

Rapid automatized naming,word-level reading,and oral reading fluency in first-grade Korean readers at risk for reading difficulties

This study was designed to investigate potential reading differences between low-achieving and typically achieving first-grade Korean-speaking children by (1) comparing their speed of lexical access on alphanumeric and non-alphanumeric tests of rapid automatized naming and (2) comparing relationships between the two groups’ performance on alphanumeric and non-alphanumeric tasks with their performance on component measures of reading. Twenty-seven low-achieving readers and 34 typically achieving readers participated in this study. The low-achieving readers performed significantly more slowly than their typically achieving reading peers on the four measures of rapid naming. The response rates for both alphanumeric naming tasks (digits and letters) showed strong negative correlations with oral reading fluency, while their response rates for the non-alphanumeric naming tasks (Color and Object naming) showed relatively weak relationships with reading measures for both groups. In regression equations, Letter naming tasks were uniquely associated with both word recognition and oral reading fluency. The utility of using alphanumeric naming tasks as indicators for identifying Korean Hangul readers who are at risk for reading disabilities is discussed.     

Effectiveness of Spanish intervention for first-grade English language learners at risk for reading difficulties

The effectiveness of an explicit, systematic reading intervention for first-grade students whose home language was Spanish and who were at risk for reading difficulties was examined. Participants were 69 students in 20 classrooms in 7 schools from 3 districts who initially did not pass the screening in Spanish and were randomly assigned within schools to a treatment or comparison group; after 7 months, 64 students remained in the study. The intervention matched the language of instruction of their core reading program (Spanish). Treatment groups of 3 to 5 students met daily for 50 min and were provided systematic and explicit instruction in oral language and reading by trained bilingual intervention teachers. Comparison students received the school's standard intervention for struggling readers. Observations during core reading instruction provided information about the reading instruction and language use of the teachers. There were no differences between the treatment and comparison groups in either Spanish or English on any measures at pretest, but there were significant posttest differences in favor of the treatment group for the following outcomes in Spanish: Letter-Sound Identification (d = 0.72), Phonological Awareness composite (d = 0.73), Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery-Revised Oral Language composite (d = 0.35), Word Attack (d = 0.85), Passage Comprehension (d = 0.55), and two measures of reading fluency (d = 0.58-0.75).     

Answering the challenge: SRSD instruction for close reading of text to write to persuade with 4th and 5th Grade students experiencing writing difficulties

Reading and Writing - We designed and investigated the first set of instructional procedures we are aware of to teach 4th and 5th grade students how to write a persuasive essay following close...     

Classroom interaction and literacy activities in kindergarten: Longitudinal links to Grade 1 readers at risk and not at risk of reading difficulties

The purpose of the present study is to establish how the quality of kindergarten classroom interactions and the frequency of literacy activities affect reading development among Grade 1 children—both those who are at risk and not at risk of developing reading difficulties. Interaction was assessed in terms of classroom organization, and the level of emotional and instructional support offered in 49 kindergarten classrooms in Finland using the CLASS (Classroom Assessment Scoring System). Kindergarten teachers also recorded the frequency of literacy activities in their classrooms. The phonological awareness and letter knowledge of 515 children (i.e., their pre-reading skills) were assessed at the end of kindergarten, as were their reading skills at the start and at the end of Grade 1. Eighty-seven of these children were identified in kindergarten as being likely to develop reading difficulties. The results showed that emotional support and classroom organization in kindergarten were positively associated with the development of children’s reading skills across Grade 1, especially for those prone to reading difficulties. They also showed that frequent literacy activities in kindergarten were positively related to children’s reading skills shortly after entering Grade 1. All the positive longitudinal associations were stronger for those children seen to be at risk of developing reading difficulties than for those not at risk.