Effects of Supplemental Early Reading Intervention at 2-Year Follow Up: Reading Skill Growth Patterns and Predictors

This study examined the long-term growth of reading skills following 1 year of supplemental 1st-grade code-oriented intervention provided by paraeducators. A group of 79 1st graders with reading skills averaging in the lowest quartile received explicit alphabetic and decoding instruction and were assessed postintervention and at 1-year intervals through the end of 3rd grade. Growth model results indicate that students continued to benefit from 1st-grade intervention through the end of 3rd grade, with average performance near 50th percentile on decoding and reading fluency, near 40th percentile on word reading and comprehension, and near 30th percentile on spelling. Without exception, both receptive language and rapid automatized naming uniquely predicted 3rd-grade outcomes. Of the students remaining in study in fall of 2nd grade, a subgroup selected by their teachers received additional supplemental instruction. Students referred for added intervention continued to perform significantly lower than those more readily remediated with 1st-grade intervention alone.     

Fostering the Development of Reading Skill through Supplemental Instruction: Results for Hispanic and Non-Hispanic Students

This paper reports the effects of a two-year supplemental reading program for kindergarten through third grade students that focused on the development of decoding skills and reading fluency. Two hundred ninety-nine students were identified for participation and were randomly assigned to the supplemental instruction or to a no-treatment control group. Participants' reading ability was assessed in the fall, before the first year of the intervention, and again in the spring of years 1, 2, 3, and 4. At the end of the two-year intervention, students who received the supplemental instruction performed significantly better than their matched controls on measures of entry level reading skills (i.e., letter-word identification and word attack), oral reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. The benefits of the instruction were still clear two years after instruction had ended with students in the supplemental-instruction condition still showing significantly greater growth on the measure of oral reading fluency. Hispanic students benefited from the supplemental reading instruction in English as much as or more than non-Hispanic students. Results support the value of supplemental instruction focused on the development of word recognition skills for helping students at risk for reading failure.     

Preventing retention: First grade classroom instruction and student characteristics

Retention is a frequently used strategy to support children who are struggling academically. However, the strategy is costly, and research findings with regard to positive outcomes are mixed. This study examined whether efficacious reading instruction might reduce rates of retention in first grade. We also evaluated the reading instruction the students received compared with children with similar reading and vocabulary skills who were not retained. Additionally, we examined the impact students' self‐regulation may have on grade retention. Findings reveal that it was significantly less likely for students to be retained at the end of first grade if their teacher was implementing more efficacious reading instruction. Moreover, there were substantial differences in the literacy instruction provided for children who were and were not retained. Finally, students in the efficacious reading condition who were retained exhibited significantly weaker self‐regulation skills than did their matched‐promoted peers. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Building Tier 3 Intervention for Long‐Term Slow Growers in Grades 3–4: A Pilot Study

Tier 3 interventions are necessary for improving the reading performance of students who fail to respond adequately to Tier 1 general education instruction and Tier 2 supplemental reading intervention. In this pilot study, we identified 8 students in 3rd and 4th grade who had demonstrated slow response to Tier 2 reading interventions for three years. Students participated in a researcher‐developed Tier 3 intervention for 8 weeks that focused on skill development in word analysis, word identification, and reading rate. In the 6 months prior to Tier 3, students were making minimal growth in reading; however, during Tier 3, the 8 students demonstrated strong growth on measures of word identification and reading rate. Although results are promising for poor readers who are difficult to remediate, several aspects of the Tier 3 intervention need further testing.     

Teachers' Spatial Anxiety Relates to 1st‐ and 2nd‐Graders' Spatial Learning

Teachers' anxiety about an academic domain, such as math, can impact students' learning in that domain. We asked whether this relation held in the domain of spatial skill, given the importance of spatial skill for success in math and science and its malleability at a young age. We measured 1st‐ and 2nd‐grade teachers' spatial anxiety (N = 19) and students' spatial skill (N = 132). Teachers' spatial anxiety significantly predicted students' end‐of‐year spatial skill, even after accounting for students' beginning‐of‐year spatial skill, phonological working memory, grade level, and teachers' math anxiety. Since spatial skill is not a stand‐alone part of the curriculum like math or reading, teachers with high levels of spatial anxiety may simply avoid incorporating spatial activities in the classroom. Results suggest that addressing teachers' spatial anxieties may improve spatial learning in early elementary school.     

Labels Needn't Stick: "At-Risk" First Graders Rescued With Appropriate Intervention

The Orton-Gillingham(r) and TouchMath(r) systems of instruction were implemented to improve language and mathematics skill development for 6- and 7-year-olds in a 1st-grade classroom. After 2 years of intervention, the participants were found to be no longer in need of special education services. All the participants showed marked improvement in reading scores on the Wide Range Achievement Test-III. The students who were considered to be at risk for reading and mathematics difficulties at the beginning of their 1st-grade year were no longer in need of special education services at the end of their 2nd-grade year.     

Links between early rhythm skills, musical training, and phonological awareness

A small number of studies show that music training is associated with improvements in reading or in its component skills. A central question underlying this present research is whether musical activity can enhance the acquisition of reading skill, potentially before formal reading instruction begins. We explored two dimensions of this question: an investigation of links between kindergartners’ music rhythm skills and their phonological awareness in kindergarten and second grade; and an investigation of whether kindergartners who receive intensive musical training demonstrate more phonological skills than kindergartners who receive less. Results indicated that rhythm skill was related to phonological segmentation skill at the beginning of kindergarten, and that children who received more music training during kindergarten showed improvement in a wider range of phonological awareness skills at the end of kindergarten than children with less training. Further, kindergartners’ rhythm ability was strongly related to their phonological awareness and basic word identification skills in second grade. We argue that rhythm sensitivity is a pre-cursor skill to oral language acquisition, and that the ability to perceive and manipulate time intervals in sound streams may link performance of rhythm and phonological tasks.     

Visual and phonological processing of words: a comparison of good and poor readers

At the beginning of the school year, 80 first graders, half receiving phonics instruction and half receiving whole word instruction, were asked to spell, read aloud, and recognize 60 regular and exception words. A standardized reading test and phoneme segmentation test were also administered. Those above grade level in reading excelled in phonological recording and application of grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules and were weaker in utilization of visual-orthographic knowledge. Those below grade level applied visual more than phonological coding and benefited from the visual-orthographic knowledge available in a clue word. Results support a continuum of visual and phonological analysis skills in first-grade reading consistent with Frith's (1985) logographic, alphabetic, and orthographic skill levels.     

The Impact of an Early Literacy Initiative on the Long Term Academic Success of Diverse Students

The primary goal of the Words Work (WW) early literacy initiative was to prepare diverse students to become successful learners in school. Four groups of students were followed over 6 years: students from traditional Head Start (HS) centers, students from augmented HS centers (WW students), students eligible for HS but not enrolled (waitlist or WL), and a random sample of non-Head Start students (NHS). Students received school readiness instruction at approximately 4 years of age, and their performance on standardized tests was followed from 1st grade through 5th grade. WW students significantly outscored HS, WL, and NHS students of similar backgrounds in reading and outscored WL and NHS students in mathematics on 2nd-grade standardized assessments. In addition, WW students were able to maintain their lead through 5th grade in both reading and mathematics. Based on these results, WW is an effective HS enhancement for minimizing the achievement gap often observed between students who may be at risk for academic difficulty and students who are at low risk.     

The Role of Gender and Reading Competence in the Development of Motivational Orientations from Kindergarten to Grade 1

This longitudinal study examined gender differences in motivation and the role of reading prerequisites, that is phonemic and comprehension skills, in the formation of motivational tendencies from kindergarten up to grade 1. The longitudinal sample consisted of 157 Finnish-speaking children. Teachers rated children's adaptive goals, (i.e. task orientation and social dependence orientation) at four points of time, kindergarten-spring, preschool-fall, preschool-spring and in the fall of grade 1. Children's phonemic awareness and language comprehension skills were assessed in kindergarten at the initiation of the study (i.e. initial phoneme identification, rhyming, writing of the alphabet, listening and instruction comprehension). Word reading and reading comprehension skills were assessed at the end of grade 1 in the three groups of children at risk for reading failure and in children with high reading prerequisites. The results showed that gender and early phonemic and language comprehension differences were associated with divergent motivational-developmental trajectories. Children with low phonemic or low language comprehension skill showed higher social dependence and lower task orientation over time than children with high initial reading prerequisites. In particular, boys with low reading prerequisites underwent a negative motivational change. The group of children who had poor phonemic and poor language comprehension skills showed most unfavorable development of motivation and reading. Findings concerning motivational trajectories are discussed with regard to the lack of fit between child's competence and curriculum demands.     

Assessment Data-Informed Guidance to Individualize Kindergarten Reading Instruction: Findings from a Cluster-Randomized Control Field Trial

The purpose of this cluster-randomized control field trial was to was to examine the extent to which kindergarten teachers could learn a promising instructional strategy, wherein kindergarten reading instruction was differentiated based upon students' ongoing assessments of language and literacy skills and documented child characteristic by instruction (CXI) interactions; and to test the efficacy of this differentiated reading instruction on the reading outcomes of students from culturally diverse backgrounds. The study involved 14 schools and included 23 treatment (n = 305 students) and 21 contrast teacher (n = 251 students). Teachers in the contrast condition received only a baseline professional development that included a researcher-delivered summer day-long workshop on individualized instruction. Data sources included parent surveys, individually administered child assessments of language, cognitive, and reading skills and videotapes of classroom instruction. Using Hierarchical Multivariate Linear Modeling (HMLM), we found students in treatment classrooms outperformed students in the contrast classrooms on a latent measure of reading skills, comprised of letter-word reading, decoding, alphabetic knowledge, and phonological awareness (ES = .52). Teachers in both conditions provided small group instruction, but teachers in the treatment condition provided significantly more individualized instruction. Our findings extend research on the efficacy of teachers using Individualized Student Instruction to individualize instruction based upon students' language and literacy skills in first through third grade. Findings are discussed regarding the value of professional development related to differentiating core reading instruction and the challenges of using Response to Intervention approaches to address students' needs in the areas of reading in general education contexts.     

An Experimental Evaluation of Guided Reading and Explicit Interventions for Primary-Grade Students At-Risk for Reading Difficulties

Abstract

Considerable research evidence supports the provision of explicit instruction for students at risk for reading difficulties; however, one of the most widely implemented approaches to early reading instruction is Guided Reading (GR; Fountas & Pinnel, 1996), which deemphasizes explicit instruction and practice of reading skills in favor of extended time reading text. This study evaluated the two approaches in the context of supplemental intervention for at-risk readers at the end of Grade 1. Students (n = 218) were randomly assigned to receive GR intervention, explicit intervention (EX), or typical school instruction (TSI). Both intervention groups performed significantly better than TSI on untimed word identification. Significant effects favored EX over TSI on phonemic decoding and one measure of comprehension. Outcomes for the intervention groups did not differ significantly from each other; however, an analysis of the added value of providing each intervention relative to expected growth with typical instruction indicated that EX is more likely to substantially accelerate student progress in phonemic decoding, text reading fluency, and reading comprehension than GR. Implications for selection of Tier 2 interventions within a response-to-intervention format are discussed.     

Mentoring teachers in systematic phonics instruction: effectiveness of an intensive year-long program for kindergarten through 3rd grade teachers and their students

Teaching systematic phonics effectively to beginning readers requires specialized knowledge and training which many primary grade teachers lack. The current study examined effects of a year-long mentoring program to improve teachers’ knowledge and effectiveness in teaching phonics and the extent that it improved students’ achievement in reading and spelling. Teachers in urban, lower SES schools completed a 45 h course followed by 90 h of in-school training. Mentors (N = 29) worked with kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade teachers (N = 69) twice a week for 30 weeks during the year. Each visit included a 45 min prep period plus 45 min of modeling and feedback in the classroom. Mentors taught teachers how to provide systematic phonics instruction to their students (N = 1,336). Monthly ratings by mentors revealed that teachers improved their phonics teaching skills with many reaching the highest ratings by May. Teachers who were non-native speakers of English took a bit longer to learn the English sound system for letters, mainly because they lacked sufficient knowledge of English sounds and had to learn them. Given the increasing diversity of the teacher work force, future research is needed to study this difficulty, its solution, and impact on students. Teachers’ agreement with principles of phonics instruction remained strong or increased from fall to spring. Students’ reading and spelling skills showed large gains during the year and far exceeded effect sizes from comparable data sources. Students met grade-level expectations at the end of kindergarten and first grade but fell short in second and third grades. General education students outperformed bilingual/ELL and special needs students although all subgroups made large gains. Findings reveal the effectiveness of an intensive mentoring model of professional development applied to a subject that is difficult to teach and to a student population known for lower reading achievement. Findings point to the need for better pre-service teacher preparation coupled with appropriate curricula and PD from districts in order to improve students’ reading achievement.     

Engagement during reading instruction for students who are deaf or hard of hearing in public schools

An observational study of reading instruction was conducted in general education, resource, and self-contained classrooms, grades 1-4, in public schools. Participants included students who were deaf or hard of hearing and their reading teachers. Results indicated that time engaged in reading and/or academically responding varied significantly by grade level enrolled, reading curriculum grade level, and instructional setting, but not level of hearing loss or presence or absence of concomitant conditions. Students working with reading curriculum one grade level below spent significantly less time in reading instruction and reading than students working on grade level or two levels below. Students in general education settings spent significantly more time in reading instruction and reading silently than students in self-contained settings. The probability that students would engage in reading was significantly increased by several teacher and ecological conditions more likely to be observed in general education settings.     

Predicting First Grade Reading Performance from Kindergarten Response to Tier 1 Instruction

Many schools are beginning to implement multi-tier response to intervention (RTI) models for the prevention of reading difficulties and to assist in the identification of students with learning disabilities (LD). The present study was part of our larger ongoing longitudinal RTI investigation within the Florida Learning Disabilities Center grant. This study used a longitudinal correlational design, conducted in 7 ethnically and socio-economically diverse schools. We observed reading instruction in 20 classrooms, examined response rates to kindergarten Tier 1 instruction, and predicted students' first grade reading performance based upon kindergarten growth and end of year reading performance (n = 203). Teachers followed an explicit core reading program and overall, classroom instruction was rated as effective. Results indicate that controlling for students' end of kindergarten reading, their growth across kindergarten on a variety of language and literacy measures suppressed predictions of first grade performance. Specifically, the steeper the students' trajectory to a satisfactory outcome, the less likely they were to demonstrate good performance in first grade. Implications for future research and RTI implementation are discussed.     

Teachers' Knowledge of Literacy Concepts,Classroom Practices,and Student Reading Growth

We examined the relations of teacher knowledge (n = 42 first-grade teachers), explicit decoding instruction provided, and students' (n = 437) word-reading gains. Results revealed an interaction between teacher knowledge and observed decoding instruction: For students of more knowledgeable teachers, more time in explicit instruction predicted stronger word-reading gains. For students of less knowledgeable teachers, more time in explicit instruction was associated with weaker skill gains. Findings highlight the importance of teachers' specialized body of knowledge about reading as it informs effective instruction.     

The development of motivational orientations as a function of divergent reading careers from pre-school to the second grade

In this study, we examined the developmental relationship of children's motivational orientations and reading skills from pre-school to the 2nd grade. Forty-eight children with differing word reading careers were identified from 115 pre-school non-readers. Pre-schoolers were assessed for cognitive–linguistic skills and motivational orientation (ratings on task-, ego-defensive, and social dependence orientation). The situational manifestations of orientations were observed during construction tasks comprising three pressure episodes. The motivational assessments were replicated (experimenter and teacher ratings) and decoding and reading comprehension tests were administered in the 1st and 2nd grades. On the basis of low, average and high pre-school phonemic awareness and word reading achievement in the 1st and 2nd grades, two regressive and two progressive word reading career groups were formed. The results showed that the regressive and the progressive reading career groups of matching initial phonemic awareness and verbal ability did not differ motivationally at pre-school age, but showed distinctive motivational orientation across contexts by the end of the second school year. A case analysis demonstrates the interactive formation of motivational orientation during reading instruction. These findings suggest that the developmental interaction of learning skills and motivational tendencies contribute to the differing reading careers.     

Effective Classroom Instruction: Implications of Child Characteristics by Reading Instruction Interactions on First Graders' Word Reading Achievement

Too many children fail to learn how to read proficiently with serious consequences for their overall well-being and long term success in school. This may be because providing effective instruction is more complex than many of the current models of reading instruction portray; there are child characteristic by instruction (CXI) interactions. Here we present efficacy results for a randomized control field trial of the Individualizing Student Instruction (ISI) intervention, which relies on dynamic system forecasting intervention models to recommend amounts of reading instruction for each student, taking into account CXI interactions that consider his or her vocabulary and reading skills. The study, conducted in seven schools with 25 teachers and 396 first graders, revealed that students in the ISI intervention classrooms demonstrated significantly greater reading skill gains by spring than did students in control classrooms. Plus, they were more likely to receive differentiated reading instruction based on CXI interaction guided recommended amounts than were students in control classrooms. The precision with which students received the recommended amounts of each type of literacy instruction, the distance from recommendation, also predicted reading outcomes.     

Development of Oral Reading Fluency in Young Children at Risk for Failure

The body of knowledge on critical components of reading instruction is broad and deep with phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension serving as building blocks for literacy. The importance of fluent reading (i.e., with speed, accuracy, and proper expression, as well as comprehension) in the formula for success is widely accepted. The purpose of this study was to evaluate oral reading rates in a sample of 2nd-grade children. Using growth curve analysis, we identified models for a combined sample of at-risk and not-at-risk children. Large and important differences in oral reading were evident, but the growth rates remained the same throughout the 2nd- grade; in fact, the gap between at-risk and not-at-risk students remained constant. We discuss the implications of our findings for future research and the improvement of practice.