Some of This, Some of That: Multiple Interventions

A combination of phonics intervention followed by fluency intervention resulted in significant improvements in decoding, fluency, and comprehension for a group of Texas students with severe reading disabilities and other disabilities.  This study by Denton, Fletcher, Anthony, and Francis (2006), showed that even students with persistent, severe reading difficulties can benefit from intensive reading interventions.

The purpose of the study was two-fold.  One purpose was to develop a reading intervention for students with reading problems who had not had adequate response to Tier 1 and Tier 2 interventions.  A second purpose was to study the effectiveness of an 8 week decoding intervention followed by an 8 week fluency intervention. (Denton et al., 2006, p. 448). The participants were 27 first grade students from four schools in an urban school district.  For the first 8 weeks, they received the Phono-Graphix phonics decoding intervention.  This was followed by 8 weeks of the Read Naturally fluency intervention.  Read Naturally uses repeated reading practice with short non-fiction texts.

At the end of the study, the students showed gains in reading fluency for isolated words and connected text.  Importantly, there were large improvements in multiple areas of reading, including decoding, fluency, and comprehension.  The results fell short in that the students’ reading ability was still below average after the interventions.  While there was benefit to the students in having both interventions, the researchers reflected that it may be useful for students to first obtain a certain level of competency in decoding before attempting an intervention that focuses on reading fluency.  In sum, the implications http://ldx.sagepub.com/content/39/5/447.full.pdf+html positive.  The study showed that even students with significant reading challenges can improve after intensive reading intervention.  Moreover, these students showed strong growth in fluency after the 8 week fluency intervention with a repeated reading instructional model. (Denton et al., 2006, p. 463-464). 

I use a phonics intervention program along with repeated reading instruction to support fluency.  While I have not broken out the interventions to be able to attribute student growth to one particular intervention, my perception is that students benefit from both decoding instruction and fluency instruction.  As they demonstrate more competence in decoding, I see similar progress in fluency and comprehension.  Thus, it appears that struggling readers benefit from a multi-faceted intervention approach that includes decoding instruction, fluency practice, and comprehension strategies.

APA Citation for the article:

Denton, C., Fletcher, J., Anthony, J., & Francis, D. (2006). An evaluation of intensive intervention for

          students with persistent reading difficulties. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 39(5), 447-466.

Link to Article:

http://ldx.sagepub.com/content/39/5/447.full.pdf+html

Crossing the Bridge to Comprehension

Fluency is more than reading fast and accurately.  Pikulski and Chard (2005) explain how fluency is the bridge between decoding and comprehension.  A reader who is not skilled in fluency has to focus more attention on figuring out words and has less attention to give to understanding the text.  Even so, just building fluency is singularly not enough because fluency without also having comprehension is of little value.

In order to build the bridge to comprehension, Pikulski and Chard propose a 9-step instructional program:

• Build the graphophonic foundations, including phonological awareness, letter knowledge, phonics
• Build and grow vocabulary.
• Provide skilled instruction and practice in high-frequency words.
• Teach common word parts and patterns.
• Teach, model, practice decoding strategies.
•  Use the right level of texts to coach reading strategies and speed.
• Use repeated reading as an intervention approach.
• Increase growing fluency with wide reading.
• Progress-monitor with appropriate assessment tools.

(Pikulski and Chard, 2005, p. 513).

I have been working on implementing the steps with my reading groups.  I find explicit instruction in decoding skills, along with using appropriate texts in repeated reading to be effective for increasing speed, accuracy, and understanding.  It is a feeling of success for both me and the student when they cross the bridge from struggling to decode to comprehending the text without effort.

APA Article Citation:

Pikulski, J., & Chard, D. (2005). Fluency: the bridge between decoding and reading intervention. The Reading Teacher, 58(6), 510-519.

Link to Article:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1598/RT.58.6.2/abstractc

Repeated Reading Text - One Size Fits All?

Educators acknowledge repeated reading is an effective instructional method for helping students to read faster and more accurately.  There still is debate around the most effective methods of repeated reading in order to achieve the best result. 

Bastug and Keskin (2014) took a look at the length of passages for repeated reading and found that students reading shorter texts had better reading rates and accuracy when compared to students using longer texts for repeated reading.  Following two groups of  3^rd grade students, they had one group read and reread short texts with no more than 100 words while the other group read and reread longer texts with a maximum of 200 words.  The findings showed both groups fluency benefitted from repeated reading regardless of text length, but the percentage change in rate and accuracy for students reading the shorter passages was greater. (Bastug and Keskin, 2014, p. 116).

This results of this study changed my approach with my reading groups.  I now use shorter passages with my 1^st and 2^nd grade struggling readers.  I find the students stay engaged with shorter text and remember more from error correction when they reread a passage.  Additionally, I am seeing more improvement even with less time spent on fluency due to the shorter passages.  My groups are more efficient and successful!

APA Citation to Article:

Bastug, M., & Keskin, H. (2014). The role of text length in repeated reading.   European Journal of Educational Studies, 6(3), 111-119.

Link to Article:

http://ozelacademy.com/ejes.v6.i3-3%20corrected.pdf