Reorganizing the instructional reading components: could there be a better way to design remedial reading programs to maximize middle school students with reading disabilities’ response to treatment?

Abstract

The primary purpose of this study was to explore if there could be a more beneficial method in organizing the individual instructional reading components (phonological decoding, spelling, fluency, and reading comprehension) within a remedial reading program to increase sensitivity to instruction for middle school students with reading disabilities (RD). Three different modules (Alternating, Integrated, and Additive) of the Reading Achievement Multi-Modular Program were implemented with 90 middle school (sixth to eighth grades) students with reading disabilities. Instruction occurred 45 min a day, 5 days a week, for 26 weeks, for approximately 97 h of remedial reading instruction. To assess gains, reading subtests of the Woodcock Johnson-III, the Gray Silent Reading Test, and Oral Reading Fluency passages were administered. Results showed that students in the Additive module outperformed students in the Alternating and Integrated modules on phonological decoding and spelling and students in the Integrated module on comprehension skills. Findings for the two oral reading fluency measures demonstrated a differential pattern of results across modules. Results are discussed in regards to the effect of the organization of each module on the responsiveness of middle school students with RD to instruction.

Predicting reading comprehension of narrative and expository texts among Hebrew-speaking readers with and without a reading disability

“…This puts forward the need for differentiated teaching, instruction that considers the variability in reading profiles and addresses the specific difficulties of RD readers. This might also support the findings of Calhoon, Sandow, and Hunter (2010) who implemented intervention programs in middle school that included decoding, spelling, fluency, and reading comprehension strategies instruction. The different study groups received the same units of instruction, while the sequence varied across groups.…”

Lexical Analysis of Words on Commonly Used Standardized Spelling Assessments

“…The six assessments (including alternate forms when available) analyzed for this study were all spelling dictation tests and were chosen based on the frequency of their use in research and school settings to determine the spelling ability of students with and without disabilities (e.g., Berninger et al, 2008;Calhoon, Sandow, & Hunter, 2010;Christopher, Giuliani, Holte, Beaman, & Camp, 1989;Conrad, 2008;Denton, Wexler, Vaughn, & Bryan, 2008;Foorman et al, 2004;Given, Wasserman, Chari, Beattie, & Eden, 2008;Higgins & Raskind, 2004;Moats, Foorman, & Taylor, 2006;Scott, Bell, & McCallum, 2009). The assessments include the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement Comprehensive (K-TEA-Comp; Kaufman & Kaufman, 1998), the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement Brief (K-TEABrief; Kaufman & Kaufman, 1985), the Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ-III) Forms A (Woodcock et al, 2001), B (Woodcock et al, 2001), and C (Woodcock et al, 2007), the Wide Range Achievement Test-4 (WRAT-4; Wilkinson, 2006) Forms Blue and Green, the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test-II (WIAT-II; Psychological Corporation, 2001), and the Test of Written Spelling-4 (TWS-4; Larsen et al, 1999).…”

Effectiveness of a Collaborative, Multi-Component Intervention for Adolescent Students with Severe Reading Disabilities

“…In order to reach this goal, we must look to prior research and build interventions that use the most robust pedagogical components (Faggella-Luby & Deshler, 2008) and that are "explicit and comprehensive, more intensive, and more supportive" than most students require (Foorman & Torgesen, 2001). Additionally, instruction that utilizes explicit/direct teaching (Carnine et al, 2006), integrate s accuracy, fluency, and comprehension (Cirino et al, 2013), provides positive emotional support, and repeated practice has led to powerful student outcomes (Calhoon et al, 2010;Lovett et al, 2000;Rashotte et al, 2001) for early readers with reading difficulties and may achieve similar outcomes when applied to older, struggling readers.…”

“…One final promising characteristic of this study lies in contrast to other research for adolescent students with reading disabilities Calhoon et al, 2010). In the current study, we utilized school personnel to implement this intervention rather than graduate assistants or researchers.…”