Effectiveness of Reading Intervention in Junior School

Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate an intervention strategy for children at risk of reading failure in their third year at school. Classes in ve UK junior schools were screened to identify children most at risk of reading failure (36 in total, mean initial age 7.6 years). Comparison children, matched overall for age and reading performance, were selected from comparable schools. The selected children were given an individually adaptive, curriculum-based, support programme with the emphasis on word building and phonics skills in the broad reading context. The programme was given to children in pairs for two half-hour sessions per week for 10 weeks. The intervention group made signi cantly more progress than the comparison group as measured by mean reading standard scores, with an overall 'effect size' of 0.67. A 6-month follow-up indicated that the overall effect size of improvement reduced to 0.55. The intervention proved cost-effective, with comparable improvements to those of Reading Recovery at around 20% of the cost. The results suggest that while cost-effective improvements in reading can be achieved at junior school, a signi cant proportion of junior children will fail to bene t from a relatively short intervention of this type. There is therefore a need for continuing support. These results highlight the importance and cost-effectiveness of early intervention in a child's initial school years.

Evaluation of a computer‐based reading intervention in infant and junior schools

“…One further potentially important factor was the group size. In the infant study, for comparability with the study reported by Nicolson et al (1999), groups of four children were used, whereas in the junior study, for comparability with the study reported by Fawcett et al (1999), groups of two were used. The teachers both remarked that whereas it is possible for an experienced teacher to make sure that all four children are actively involved with traditional teaching, this is more difficult with computer-based support since there is only one mouse, and consequently there can be a tendency for one child to dominate and others to withdraw.…”

“…For any ITA approach to work effectively, it is necessary to have a model of a good teaching system for the skill involved. In the infant and junior school interventions discussed above Fawcett et al, 1999) we adopted the IA&T scheme (Reason and Boote, 1994), which is a well-tested, theoretically sound, pragmatically based approach well-tuned to the problems of dyslexia and compatible with the ITA approach. Key aspects of the IA&T approach are described in Nicolson et al (1999), but a brief outline may be given here.…”

“…The analysis of children who made little or no progress is of central practical importance. Fawcett et al (1999) and Nicolson et al (1999) found that children screened to be`at-risk' on the DEST or DST were more likely to make little progress than the remainder of the samples. This finding also applies to the RITA support, with significant differences in literacy improvement found between`at-risk' and`not at-risk' groups both at infant and junior level.…”

Improving the reading skills of young people with Duchenne muscular dystrophy in preparation for adulthood

“…Because the data was not normally distributed, a series of nonparametric Wilcoxon tests were undertaken. In accordance with literature on literacy intervention studies (Fawcett et al 2001) two factor anovas were also conducted to investigate optimum age of following the intervention. This allows effect of scores at pre-test to be examined in relation to post-test and any interactions between group and time to be examined.…”

Comparing the Effectiveness of Two Reading Intervention Programs for Children With Reading Disabilities

“…Recently, there has been an increase in intervention studies that have emphasized direct instruction on phonological awareness, letter-name and letter-sound knowledge, and whole-word reading (e.g., Blachman et al, 2004;Engelmann & Bruner, 1995b;Foorman et al, 1997;O'Shaughnessy & Swanson, 2000;Torgesen, Wagner, Rashotte, Alexander, & Conway, 1997). However, at the same time, there is a growing concern regarding the effectiveness of such training (e.g., Blachman, 1997;Bus & van IJzendoorn, 1999;Fawcett, Nicolson, Moss, Nicolson, & Reason, 2001;Schneider, Ennemoser, Roth, & Küspert, 1999). For example , Wagner, Torgesen, Laughon, Simmons, and Rashotte (1993) concluded that phonological processing training, by itself, provides, at best, limited improvement in reading ability.…”