Long-Term Effects of First-Grade Multitier Intervention

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare the long-term effects of 2 first-grade Response to Intervention (RTI) models (Dynamic and Typical RTI) on the reading performance of students in second and third grade. Participants included 419 first-grade students (352 in second grade and 278 in third grade after attrition). Students were classified based on first-grade screeners as at risk or not at risk and then based on their RTI (no risk [NR], relative easy to remediate [ER], and requiring sustained remediation [SR]). Students in the dynamic RTI condition had higher reading comprehension scores at the end of third grade. At the end of second grade, ER and SR students had lower reading scores than NR students. At the end of third grade, there were no differences in reading skills between ER and NR students, but SR students had lower scores than NR students. ER students in the dynamic RTI condition had higher reading scores at the end of second grade than those in the typical RTI condition. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed.     

Modeling and Visualizing the Codevelopment of Word and Nonword Reading in Children From First Through Fourth Grade: Informing Developmental Trajectories of Children With Dyslexia

Developmental studies examining relations between word reading (WR) and decoding in typical and dyslexic populations routinely cut the reading distribution to form distinct groups. However, dichotomizing continuous variables to study development is problematic for multiple reasons. Instead, we modeled and visualized the parallel growth of WR and nonword reading (NWR) factor scores longitudinally in a Grade 1–4 developmental sample (N = 588). The results indicate that while WR and NWR growth factors are highly related (r = .71), the relation between WR and NWR trajectories change as a function of initial WR. Results are interpreted within computational models of dyslexia in which children with dyslexia overfit orthography → phonology relations at the level of the word, limiting the development of sublexical representations needed to read nonwords.