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