Repeated reading intervention: Outcomes and interactions with readers' skills and classroom instruction.

This study examined effects of a repeated reading intervention, Quick Reads, with incidental word-level scaffolding instruction. Second- and third-grade students with passage-reading fluency performance between the 10th and 60th percentiles were randomly assigned to dyads, which were in turn randomly assigned to treatment (paired tutoring, n = 82) or control (no tutoring, n = 80) conditions. Paraeducators tutored dyads for 30 min per day, 4 days per week, for 15 weeks (November-March). At midintervention, most teachers with students in the study were formally observed during their literacy blocks. Multilevel modeling was used to test for direct treatment effects on pretest-posttest gains as well as to test for unique treatment effects after classroom oral text reading time, 2 pretests, and corresponding interactions were accounted for. Model results revealed both direct and unique treatment effects on gains in word reading and fluency. Moreover, complex interactions between group, oral text reading time, and pretests were also detected, suggesting that pretest skills should be taken into account when considering repeated reading instruction for 2nd and 3rd graders with low to average passage-reading fluency. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Teaching parents to use research-supported systematic strategies to tutor their children in reading.

This study investigated the efficacy of a method of parent training and parent reading tutoring that built on past research. Parents of five first-grade children who were reading below grade level participated. Parents were trained to implement a tutoring procedure that included modeling, practice, phonics, fluency building, accuracy building, comprehension, and reinforcement components. Assessment of audiotape recordings and permanent products indicated high levels of treatment integrity. A multiple baseline across participants design was used to assess the results. Four of the five children exhibited an increase in words read correctly per minute on tutored reading passages. Issues that arose in the implementation of this study are discussed, as well as research regarding how to tailor home tutoring procedures to parent-child dyads. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individualizing a web-based structure strategy intervention for fifth graders' comprehension of nonfiction.

In the study, we investigated effects of 2 different versions of a web-based tutoring system to provide 5th-grade students with strategy instruction about text structure, which was an intervention to improve reading comprehension. The design feature assessed varied in individualization of instruction (individualized or standard). The more individually tailored version was developed to provide remediation or enrichment lessons matched to the individual needs of each student. Stratified random assignment was used to compare the effects of 2 versions of the 6-month web-based intervention. Students in the individualized condition made greater improvements from pretest to posttest on a standardized reading comprehension test (d = 0.55) than did students in the standard condition (d = 0.30). Students receiving more individualized instruction demonstrated higher mastery achievement goals when working in the lessons than did students receiving the standard instruction (d = 0.53). Students receiving more individualized instruction showed greater improvement in using signaling, better work in lessons, and more positive posttest attitudes toward computers than did students receiving standard instruction. Students in both conditions improved their recall of ideas from texts and their use of the text structure strategy and comparison signaling words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Remediating number combination and word problem deficits among students with mathematics difficulties: A randomized control trial.

The purposes of this study were to assess the efficacy of remedial tutoring for 3rd graders with mathematics difficulty, to investigate whether tutoring is differentially efficacious depending on students’ math difficulty status (mathematics difficulty alone vs. mathematics plus reading difficulty), to explore transfer from number combination (NC) remediation, and to examine the transportability of the tutoring protocols. At 2 sites, 133 students were stratified on mathematics difficulty status and site and then randomly assigned to 3 conditions: control (no tutoring), tutoring on automatic retrieval of NCs (i.e., Math Flash), or tutoring on word problems with attention to the foundational skills of NCs, procedural calculations, and algebra (i.e., Pirate Math). Tutoring occurred for 16 weeks, 3 sessions per week and 20–30 min per session. Math Flash enhanced fluency with NCs with transfer to procedural computation but without transfer to algebra or word problems. Pirate Math enhanced word problem skill as well as fluency with NCs, procedural computation, and algebra. Tutoring was not differentially efficacious as a function of students’ mathematics difficulty status. The tutoring protocols proved transportable across sites. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of instructional match and content overlap on generalized reading performance

This study examined the effects of instructional match and content overlap on students' ability to generalize from passage reading instruction. Four students with mild disabilities served as participants. Using a multielement design, students were instructed with passages at two levels of text difficulty (instructionally matched vs. instructionally mismatched), and generalization was assessed with passages at two levels of similarity to those instructed (low vs. high content overlap). Results indicated that students' oral reading accuracy and fluency showed the greatest degree of generalization when instructional materials were matched to the students' skill level and assessment materials were similar to those used during instruction. Moreover, these results were maintained at 1-month follow-up. The implications of these findings for classroom reading instruction and the assessment of students' reading skills are discussed.     

Development of word reading fluency and spelling in a consistent orthography: An 8-year follow-up.

In a longitudinal study, development of word reading fluency and spelling were followed for almost 8 years. In a group of 115 students (65 girls, 50 boys) acquiring the phonologically transparent German orthography, prediction measures (letter knowledge, phonological short-term memory, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and nonverbal IQ) were assessed at the beginning of Grade 1; reading fluency and spelling were tested at the end of Grade 1 as well as in Grades 4 and 8. Reading accuracy was close to ceiling in all reading assessments, such that reading fluency was not heavily influenced by differences in reading accuracy. High stability was observed for word reading fluency development. Of the dysfluent readers in Grade 1, 70% were still poor readers in Grade 8. For spelling, children who at the end of Grade 1 still had problems translating spoken words into phonologically plausible letter sequences developed problems with orthographic spelling later on. The strongest specific predictors were rapid automatized naming for reading fluency and phonological awareness for spelling. Word recognition speed was a relevant and highly stable indicator of reading skills and the only indicator that discriminated reading skill levels in consistent orthographies. Its long-term development was more strongly influenced by early naming speed than by phonological awareness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sources of Individual Differences in Reading Comprehension and Reading Fluency.

This study examined the common and distinct contributions of context-free and context reading skill to reading comprehension and the contributions of context-free reading skill and reading comprehension to context fluency. The 113 4th-grade participants were measured in reading comprehension, read aloud a folktale, and read aloud the folktale's words in a random list. Fluency was scaled as speed (words read correctly in 1 min) and time (seconds per correct word). Relative to list fluency, context fluency was a stronger predictor of comprehension. List fluency and comprehension each uniquely predicted context fluency, but their relative contributions depended on how fluency was scaled (time or speed). Results support the conclusion that word level processes contribute relatively more to fluency at lower levels while comprehension contributes relatively more at higher levels. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Curriculum-based measurement in reading: A comparison of similar versus challenging material.

Although research has demonstrated that long-term goals based on the student's instructional match are most sensitive to student gains, there have been few studies investigating whether probe material should be selected from material in which the student is currently instructed or from material in which the student is expected to be instructional after 1 year. The purpose of this study was to determine whether similar material or challenging material would be the most sensitive for progress monitoring of student oral reading fluency. The oral reading fluency of 20 students reading on a 2nd grade level was monitored concurrently with similar and challenging material. The results of this study suggested that the measures were equally sensitive. However, both types of measurement appear to have significant error associated with the data. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transfer of fluency across repetitions and across texts.

Three experiments examined transfer of reading fluency across repeated readings of the same text and across related but different texts with a total of 102 college students. In Exp 1, it was found that a paraphrase that altered the syntactic structure of sentences but not the lexical identity of main concepts or the unfolding of the message was reprocessed as an unchanged repetition. However, when the paraphrase altered the lexical identity of main concepts, there was a loss in the repetition benefit. In Exps 2 and 3, there was transfer from a representation of 1 text to the reading of a 2nd text only if the messages were continuous. Results are discussed in terms of the influence of episodic text representations on reading fluency. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Does growth rate in oral reading fluency matter in predicting reading comprehension achievement?

In this study, we examined the relationship of growth trajectories of oral reading fluency, vocabulary, phonological awareness, letter-naming fluency, and nonsense word reading fluency from 1st grade to 3rd grade with reading comprehension in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades. Data from 12,536 children who were followed from kindergarten to 3rd grade longitudinally were used. These children were administered Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills subtests, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test—Third Edition, and reading comprehension (Stanford Achievement Test, 10th ed.) tasks multiple times in each year. Students' initial status and rate of growth in each predictor within each grade were estimated using individual growth modeling. These estimates were then used as predictors in dominance regression analyses to examine relative contributions that the predictors made to the outcome: reading comprehension. Among the 1st-grade predictors, individual differences in growth rate in oral reading fluency in 1st grade, followed by vocabulary skills and the autoregressive effect of reading comprehension, made the most contribution to reading comprehension in 3rd grade. Among the 2nd- and 3rd-grade predictors, children's initial status in oral reading fluency had the strongest relationships with their reading comprehension skills in 3rd grade. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Modeling oral reading fluency development in Latino students: A longitudinal study across second and third grade.

This study examines growth in oral reading fluency across 2nd and 3rd grade for Latino students grouped in 3 English proficiency levels: students receiving English as a second language (ESL) services (n = 2,182), students exited from ESL services (n = 965), and students never designated as needing services (n = 1,857). An important focus was to learn whether, within these 3 groups, proficiency levels and growth were reliably related to special education status. Using hierarchical linear modeling, the authors compared proficiency levels and growth in oral reading fluency in English between and within groups and then to state reading benchmarks. Findings indicate that oral reading fluency scores reliably distinguished between students with learning disabilities and typically developing students within each group (effect sizes ranging from 0.96 to 1.51). The growth trajectory included a significant quadratic trend (generally slowing over time). These findings support the effectiveness of using oral reading fluency in English to screen and monitor reading progress under Response to Intervention models, but also suggest caution in interpreting oral reading fluency data as part of the process in identifying students with learning disabilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Resilient readers? University students who are poor recoders but sometimes good text comprehenders.

The authors screened 194 university students to determine whether some could comprehend text well despite very poor recoding skills, measured by pseudoword reading. Most of the 17 poorest recoders had never been identified as reading disabled. We classified 6 poor recoders as "resilient readers" because their text comprehension scores were average or above, relative to the sample as a whole. They were indistinguishable from 6 matched typical readers on measures of text comprehension derived from oral-reading think-aloud protocols. There was no evidence that the resilient readers relied on superior verbal ability or working memory to compensate for poor recoding. The resilient readers were poor at spelling, reading isolated words, and reading text rapidly, but they showed adequate phonemic awareness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A randomized controlled trial study of the ABRACADABRA reading intervention program in grade 1.

This study reports a randomized controlled trial evaluation of a computer-based balanced literacy intervention, ABRACADABRA (http://grover.concordia.ca/abra/version1/abracadabra.html). Children (N = 144) in Grade 1 were exposed either to computer activities for word analysis, text comprehension, and fluency, alongside shared stories (experimental groups), or to balanced literacy approaches delivered by their classroom teachers (control group). Two computer-based interventions—a phoneme-based synthetic phonics method and a rime-based analytic phonics method—were contrasted. Children were taught 4 times per week for 12 weeks in small groups. There were significant improvements in letter knowledge in the analytic phonics program and significant improvements in phonological awareness, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension at immediate posttest and in phonological awareness and reading fluency at a delayed posttest in the synthetic phonics program. Effect size analyses confirmed that both interventions had a significant impact on literacy at both posttests. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Accuracy of teacher judgments in predicting oral reading fluency.

The relationship between teachers' judgments versus actual performance on curriculum-based measures in reading was examined. A total of 30 regular education teachers were asked to predict the oral reading fluency score of students along with a rating scale of reading subskills. Correlations between teacher judgment measures and student performance found that teachers were accurate reporters of student performance levels in reading. However, some questions were raised whether teachers were accurate at predicting the actual level of student oral reading fluency when effect sizes were used to compare teacher judgment and actual student performance. Recommendations for continued research in understanding the parameters of the accuracy of teacher judgment are made. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Explicit Self-Regulated Strategy Development Versus Reciprocal Questioning: Effects on Expository Reading Comprehension Among Struggling Readers.

The effects of 2 rigorous strategic approaches to reading comprehension for 32 5th-grade students who struggle with reading were investigated. The first approach, TWA (Think before reading, think While reading, think After reading), was taught following explicit self-regulated strategy development instructional procedures (K. R. Harris & S. Graham. 1999). The second approach, reciprocal questioning (RQ), was taught following Cooperative ReQuest procedures developed by A. V. Manzo. U. C. Manzo, and T. H. Estes (2001). Compared with RQ students, TWA students improved significantly (with medium to large effect sizes) on 5 oral reading comprehension measures. There were no significant differences, however, between groups on 3 written comprehension measures, self-efficacy, or motivation. Students were positive about each intervention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Selecting at-risk readers in first grade for early intervention: A two-year longitudinal study of decision rules and procedures.

Response to intervention (RTI) models for identifying learning disabilities rely on the accurate identification of children who, without Tier 2 tutoring, would develop reading disability (RD). This study examined 2 questions concerning the use of 1st-grade data to predict future RD: (a) Does adding initial word identification fluency (WIF) and 5 weeks of WIF progress-monitoring data (WIF-Level and WIF-Slope) to a typical 1st-grade prediction battery improve RD prediction? and (b) Can classification tree analysis improve the prediction accuracy compared to logistic regression? Four classification models based on 206 1st-grade children followed through the end of 2nd grade were evaluated. A combination of initial WIF, WIF-Level, and WIF-Slope and classification tree analysis improved prediction sufficiently to recommend their use with RTI. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fluency: A review of developmental and remedial practices.

The authors review theory and research relating to fluency instruction and development. They surveyed the range of definitions for fluency, primary features of fluent reading, and studies that have attempted to improve the fluency of struggling readers. They found that (a) fluency instruction is generally effective, although it is unclear whether this is because of specific instructional features or because it involves children in reading increased amounts of text; (b) assisted approaches seem to be more effective than unassisted approaches; (c) repetitive approaches do not seem to hold a clear advantage over nonrepetitive approaches; and (d) effective fluency instruction moves beyond automatic word recognition to include rhythm and expression, or what linguists refer to as the prosodic features of language. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationships of three components of reading fluency to reading comprehension.

This study examined the relationships of 3 levels of reading fluency--the individual word, the syntactic unit, and the whole passage--to reading comprehension among 278 5th graders heterogeneous in reading ability. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that reading fluency at each level related uniquely to performance on a standardized reading comprehension test in a model including inferencing skill and background knowledge. The study supports an automaticity effect for word recognition speed and an automaticity-like effect related to syntactic processing skill. In addition, hierarchical regressions using longitudinal data suggest that fluency and reading comprehension have a bidirectional relationship. The discussion emphasizes the theoretical expansion of reading fluency to 3 levels of cognitive processes and the relations of these processes to reading comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)