Effects of a Randomized Reading Intervention Study Aimed at 9‐Year‐Olds: A 5‐Year Follow‐up

Abstract

The present paper reports on a 5-year follow-up of a randomized reading intervention in grade 3 in Sweden. An intervention group (n = 57) received daily training for 12 weeks in phoneme/grapheme mapping, reading comprehension and reading speed, whereas a control group (n = 55) participated in ordinary classroom activities. The main aim was to investigate if there were remaining effects of the intervention on reading-related skills. Previous analyses showed that the intervention group performed significantly better than the control group on spelling, reading speed, reading comprehension and phoneme awareness at the immediate post-test with sustained effects 1 year later. Results from the 5-year follow-up show that the only significant difference between the intervention (n = 47) and the control group (n = 37) was on word decoding. There was also a significant interaction effect of group assignment and initial word decoding, in the way that the lowest-performing students benefitted the most from the intervention. Another aim was to examine if the children identified in a screening (n = 2212) as poor readers in grade 2 still performed worse than typical readers. The analyses showed that the typically developing students (n = 66) outperformed the students identified as poor readers in grade 2 on working memory, spelling, reading comprehension and word decoding. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An evaluation of systematized phonics on reading proficiency in Swedish second grade poor readers: Effects on pseudoword and sight word reading skills

“…At T3, when Group 2 had received systematized phonics, they outperformed Group 1 in a comparable manner. This is in line with previous studies reporting positive reading outcomes for intervention methods with a primary focus on PA and phoneme–grapheme correspondence (Gustafson et al, 2011; McArthur et al, 2018; Vellutino et al, 2008; Wanzek et al, 2018; Wolff, 2011; Wolff, 2016). Gustafson et al (2011) compared computer‐based reading intervention (bottom‐up, top‐down or a combination of both) in Swedish second grade children, and showed that the combined training resulted in large effect sizes for pseudoword reading, sight word reading and word decoding.…”

“…At T3, when Group 2 had received systematized phonics, they outperformed Group 1 in a comparable manner. This is in line with previous studies reporting positive reading outcomes for intervention methods with a primary focus on PA and phoneme-grapheme correspondence (Gustafson et al, 2011;McArthur et al, 2018;Vellutino et al, 2008;Wanzek et al, 2018;Wolff, 2011;Wolff, 2016). Gustafson et al 2011 Lastly, in Wolff's study (Wolff, 2011), 9-year-old children took part in a multi-component reading intervention (PA, reading fluency and comprehension; 12 weeks for a total of 40 hr).…”

“…There have been efforts to realize intense reading intervention at the municipality level in Sweden. For example, Wolff (2011, 2016) combined phoneme–grapheme mapping, reading comprehension and reading speed in an intervention to Grade 3‐poor readers. The children received 40 hr of training in a one‐to‐one setting, conducted daily in schools over 12 weeks.…”

“…Wolff proved that reading comprehension skills, spelling, phonemic awareness (PA) and reading speed can be enhanced, with positive effects remaining one year later. In the 5‐year follow‐up (Wolff, 2016), effects were observed only on word decoding, although a broad spectrum of reading tasks comprised the intervention, making it difficult to determine what feature contributed to this effect. In another Swedish study (Gustafson et al, 2011), computer‐based reading intervention (bottom‐up, top‐down or a combination of both) was performed at the municipality level for struggling second grade readers.…”

The Effects of One versus Two Years of Intensive Reading Intervention Implemented with Late Elementary Struggling Readers

“…When delivered with sufficient intensity and dosage to remediate foundational skills, interventions in early elementary grades have demonstrated the potential to alter future educational trajectories, particularly with regard to word-level reading skills (Blachman et al, 2014; Wolff, 2016). However, interventions targeting students in late elementary grades have not demonstrated similarly robust findings, particularly for reading comprehension.…”