Headsprout^® Early Reading for children with severe intellectual disabilities: a single blind randomised controlled trial

Abstract

Research evaluating phonics reading programs for children with severe intellectual disabilities (ID) is limited. The current study investigated whether using an online reading program (Headsprout â Early Reading; HER) as supplementary reading instruction for children with a severe ID leads to improvements in reading skills as compared to children not receiving this additional instruction. Fifty-five children from a special school were randomly allocated into the HER group or a waiting list control group. For six months, children in the intervention group received HER as supplementary instruction, whereas children in the control group received only reading as usual' teaching. Pre-and post-intervention tests on standardised reading measures were conducted. Analysis of data from outcome measures indicated that the HER group made improvements at post-intervention in comparison with the control group, with medium effect sizes on two domains from the main outcome measure. These results support the case for a larger research trial of HER for children with severe ID.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Psychosocial‐behavioural interventions for school‐aged children with intellectual disabilities: A systematic review of randomised control trials

“…Outcome measures used were seldom found in more than one study; different measures were used in 23/27 studies. The exceptions included Grindle et al (2021) and Roberts‐Tyler et al (2020) where reading skills were assessed with the same measures; the aim of the Roberts‐Tyler et al (2020) study was to assess the feasibility of the program used later by Grindle et al (2021). The Behaviour Rating Inventory of Executive Function‐preschool version (Gioia et al, 2003) was used in two studies, however Hessl et al (2019) used this as a measure of behaviour and executive functioning, while Bennett and Buckley (2013) used it as a measure of behaviour and emotion.…”

Teaching early reading skills to non‐vocal students with severe learning disabilities using Headsprout Early Reading©

“…For example, students could complete three different online episodes in a week if they reached the mastery criterion each time. The mastery criterion in this study, however, was set at 80% correct responses throughout the episode rather than 90% (see, for example, Grindle et al, 2013Grindle et al, , 2021Herring et al, 2019). This was considered to be a more realistic achievement goal for students and not likely to impact on the main objective of students being able to progress through the episodes.…”

“…Grindle et al (2021) investigated whether using HER© as supplementary reading instruction for children with SLD led to improvements in reading skills after six months as compared to children receiving reading as usual instruction. Fifty‐five children from a special school were randomly allocated into the HER© group or a waiting list control group.…”

“…The HER© teaching procedure for verbal children with a learning disability was followed as closely as possible (for instance, Grindle et al, 2021; Grindle et al, 2013; Herring et al, 2019). For example, it was recommended that each student practise HER© at least three times a week when they were in school and that they work sequentially through the episodes.…”

“…Following the HER© intervention, all six children improved their scores on standardized measures of phonemic awareness, nonsense word decoding and word recognition skills. Grindle et al (2021) investigated whether using HER© as supplementary reading instruction for children with SLD led to improvements in reading skills after six months as compared to children receiving reading as usual instruction. Fifty-five children from a special school were randomly allocated into the HER© group or a waiting list control group.…”