Intervention after Grade 1: Serving Increased Numbers of Struggling Readers Effectively

Abstract

The present study replicated the original evaluation of the Howard Street tutoring model (Morris, Shaw, & Perney, 1990), an intervention for struggling readers in second and third grade. It also evaluated the effectiveness of supervised paraprofessionals (Title I aides) in delivering that tutorial. For an entire school year, teachers or paraprofessionals, working under the supervision of a reading specialist, tutored 40 struggling readers twice per week for 45 minutes per session. The tutored group's instruction included guided reading in leveled texts with controlled vocabulary, word study, and reading for fluency. The control group's instruction, which was provided daily in a small-group context, featured guided reading and phonics work in the classroom basal reader. Analysis of covariance was used to compare the performance of the two groups on several end-of-year reading measures. Results showed that, overall, the tutored group outperformed the control group on each of the posttest reading measures (standardized and informal). In addition, the subset of students tutored by paraprofessionals outperformed the control students. In fact, results indicated that in the structured tutoring context, paraprofessional tutors were almost as effective as certified teachers.

Small-Group, Computer-Assisted Tutoring to Improve Reading Outcomes for Struggling First and Second Graders

“…Slavin et al's (2010) review found that phonetic tutoring programs with paraprofessional tutors averaged an effect size of 0.38. A small study by Brown, Morris, and Fields (2005) that directly compared teachers and paraprofessionals as tutors using the same program also found higher effects for teachers (ES ϭ 0.47). Similarly, Ehri, Dreyer, Flugman, and Gross (2007) found much better outcomes for teachers than for paraprofessionals using the same program (ES ϭ 0.52).…”

Effectiveness of Paraeducator-Supplemented Individual Instruction

“…Yet effective word reading interventions for older students have been implemented by nonteacher tutors. Brown, Morris, and Fields (2005) …”

A randomized control trial of Shared Evaluation Pedagogy: The near-term and long-term impact of dialogically organized reading instruction

“…Other studies (e.g., Jordan et al, 2000) have included a focus on vocabulary instruction as a lever for improving students' assessed comprehension. Of those studies that target global comprehension directly, the emphasis is generally on explicit teaching of comprehension strategies such as summarization, question generation and/or specific kinds of comprehension-related tasks, such as locating the main idea of a passage or making inferences about textual meaning (Brown et al, 2005;Leslie & Allen, 1999;O'Connor et al, 2002;Johnson-Glenberg, 2000;Lubliner, 2004;Mason, 2004;Meyer et al, 2002;McGee & Johnson, 2003). We were not able to locate intervention studies that provided opportunities for students to explore textual meaning through authentic, contingent, open dialogue.…”

“…We organized our study around our primary research question: was the SHEP intervention able to positively influence student achievement as reflected by these five measures? Our purpose in posing the question was to estimate the impact of the SHEP intervention specifically and to establish whether dialogically organized instruction might generally be a viable alternative to more explicit, direct forms of instruction that characterize most current comprehension interventions (e.g., Brown, Morris, & Fields, 2005;Johnson-Glenberg, 2000;Lubliner, 2004;Mason, 2004). Nystrand (1997) proposes that "the underlying epistemology of classroom interaction defines the bottom line for learning: What ultimately counts is the extent to which instruction requires students to think, not just report on someone else 's thinking" (p. 72, emphasis in original).…”