Preventing reading failure in young children with phonological processing disabilities: Group and individual responses to instruction.

Abstract

The relative effectiveness of 3 instructional approaches for the prevention of reading disabilities in young children with weak phonological skills was examined. Two programs varying in the intensity of instruction in phonemic decoding were contrasted with each other and with a 3rd approach that supported the children's regular classroom reading program. The children were provided with 88 hr of one-to-one instruction beginning the second semester of kindergarten and extending through 2nd grade. The most phonemically explicit condition produced the strongest growth in word level reading skills, but there were no differences between groups in reading comprehension. Word level skills of children in the strongest group were in the middle of the average range. Growth curve analyses showed that beginning phonological skills, home background, and ratings of classroom behavior all predicted unique variance in growth of word level skills.This study was designed to contribute to our understanding of the instructional conditions that need to be in place to prevent reading disabilities in young children. Both the specific design of the study and the questions it addressed were derived from previous research and theory in two areas. The broadest context of the study is the new understanding of reading and reading disabilities we have acquired from research over the past 20 years (Adams, 1990;Metsala & Ehri, 1998), and the more focused context is previous research on instructional methods that accelerate reading development in young children who are either experiencing or are at risk for reading failure (Foorman,

Specific reading disability (dyslexia): what have we learned in the past four decades?

“…Bruck, 1992;Liberman, Shankweiler, Fischer, & Carter, 1974;Snowling, 2000a;Wagner & Torgesen, 1987). More direct evidence for the possibility that deficiencies in phonological awareness and alphabetic mapping may be causally related to reading difficulties comes from naturalistic studies, controlled laboratory studies, and intervention studies in which it was found that training that helped children acquire these skills had a beneficial effect on word identification, spelling, and reading ability in general (Adams, 1990;Blachman, 1994Blachman, , 2000Bradley & Bryant, 1983;Foorman, Francis, Novy, & Liberman, 1991;Foorman, Francis, Fletcher, Schatschneider, & Mehta, 1998;Hatcher, Hulme & Ellis, 1994;Lundberg, Frost, & Petersen, 1988;Olson, Wise, & Ring, 1999;Scanlon, Vellutino, Small, & Fanuele, 2000;Torgesen, Rose, Lindamood, Conway, & Garvan, 1999;Vellutino & Scanlon, 1987a;Vellutino et al, 1996;Williams, 1980). Thus, although there is abundant evidence that difficulty in learning to identify printed words is the manifest cause of reading difficulties in beginning readers, there is also abundant evidence that this problem, itself, is causally related to significant difficulties acquiring phonological analysis skills and mastering the alphabetic code, regardless of more distinct causes (intrinsic vs. environmental and instructional).…”

Response to intervention with older students with reading difficulties

“…Determination of the level of intervention needed is based on the results of progress-monitoring assessments of instructional response. When these components are in place, RTI represents a school-wide change model that requires a close working relationship among general education, special education, and other instructional resources in a school and district.Although there is a need to expand the knowledge base on RTI with elementary students, much is known about universal screening, progress monitoring, and multi-tiered intervention with younger students at risk for reading difficulties (Blachman et al, 2004;Denton, Fletcher, Anthony, & Francis, 2006;Felton, 1993;Fletcher, Lyon, Fuchs, & Barnes, 2006;Jenkins & O'Connor, 2002;Lovett et al, 2000;Mathes et al, 2005;McMaster, Fuchs, Fuchs, & Compton, 2005;Torgesen et al, 1999;Vellutino et al, 1996). However, considerably less is known about the factors associated with effective screening, progress monitoring, and intervention for older students.…”

A Second Chance in Second Grade: The Independent and Cumulative Impact of First- and Second-Grade Reading Instruction and Students' Letter-Word Reading Skill Growth

“…Explicit code-focused instruction includes the alphabetic principle, phonological awareness, phonics, sight word reading, and some word-level fluency activities. The extant literature on learning disabilities underscores these findings (Torgesen et al, 2001;Torgesen et al, 1999). Meaning-focused activities-such as reading aloud, teaching comprehension strategies, repeated reading, and vocabulary-predict student outcomes as well (Al'Otaiba et al, in review;Connor, Morrison, & Petrella, 2004;Connor, Morrison, & Slominski, 2006;National Reading Panel, 2000;Snow, 2001).…”