Research Questions

How do classroom instructional practices and child characteristics interact in a child at risk for reading difficulties?

• Small group instruction is provided to Grade 1 children at-risk for reading problems

• Proactive Instruction: provides a structured approach to instruction that integrates decoding using the alphabetic principal, fluency, and comprehension strategies following a predetermined scope and sequence

• Responsive Instruction: guides children to integrate decoding using the alphabetic principal, fluency, and comprehension strategies through contextual experiences with authentic text

• Enhanced Classroom Instruction: early identification, professional development of classroom teachers, the use of the Texas Primary Reading Inventory to identify instructional needs, and use of Information and Computer Technologies

• Interactions of classroom context/instruction and intensive intervention

• Interactions of child characteristics and intensive intervention

• Outcomes of pull-out programs relative to enhanced classroom instruction

Students

Approximately 144 first-grade children at-risk for reading problems in each of two cohorts across years 2 and 3 of the 3-year study (total approximate n = 288). These children are randomly assigned to the three intervention conditions. A group of children not at-risk are also followed to establish normative patterns of development.

These children are those within their schools who are most at-risk for reading disabilities because of weaknesses in ability to process the phonological features of language and delays in the initial acquisition of reading abilities.

Schools

Six carefully selected elementary schools comparable on demographic variables but differing in adopted basal reading curriculum. The two adopted curriculums balance instruction in the alphabetic principle, teaching for meaning, and opportunities to read books.

Procedures

We employ 6 certified teachers who were hired to deliver one of the two types of intensive preventive instruction.

Children in both instructional conditions meet in small groups (3 children) for 40 minutes a day, five days a week, from October through May.

Instruction is provided at a time during the day that does not conflict with the core reading lessons offered in the regular classroom

Small Group Interventions

The essential contrast between the Proactive and Responsive approaches is between a method that directly teaches phonic elements carefully controlling the sequence of information, with one that teaches and practices reading skills through examining words and exploring language patterns in print. Both are integrated approaches with research support for effectiveness. The critical question is with whom are these approaches effective.

Proactive Intervention

The Proactive intervention provides carefully sequenced teacher-directed instruction designed to assist children in the integrated and fluent use of alphabetic knowledge. Lessons are designed to scaffold new information to allow the children to assimilate and integrate this new information into existing schema. In a typical lesson, the students practice letter-sound correspondences for previously taught letters, practice writing these letters, and learn the sound of a new letter that has been chosen because it is visually and auditorially dissimilar to other recently presented letter-sound correspondences. Students also play word games designed to promote phonological awareness, practice the sounding-out of words composed of previously taught letter-sound correspondences, spell words from dictation based on their sound-symbol correspondences, practice automatic recognition of words that do not conform to alphabetic rules, and practice reading connected text comprised of previously taught phonic elements or sight words.

Students in the Proactive Intervention at Ashford Elementary

Responsive Intervention

The Responsive intervention encompasses reading and writing practice, word and sentence building activities, and reading of authentic children's books leveled according to children's "proximal zone," but not controlled for "decodability." In a typical lesson, children practice reading a familiar story and a less familiar story, engage in phonological awareness, word-building, and word-analysis skills by working on words encountered in the text and using manipulatives, and write a sentence in which the teacher emphasizes the speech sounds involved and the alphabet letters used to represent the respective sounds to illustrate the use of the alphabetic principle. At the end of each session a new story is introduced by the teacher, who devotes time for stimulating relevant background knowledge and assisting children to form hypotheses about the book's content before the students make their first attempt at reading it with the teacher's assistance. This new story is then revisited the following day. Teachers use a plethora of carefully selected children's books to match students' interests and reading level. These books are ranked for difficulty (readability) in 16 different levels (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996).

Fidelity

The teachers who provide small-group instruction in each method receive 30 hours of pre-service training from our research staff in the summer before instruction begins, and they attend a two hour inservice meeting every two weeks for the first three months (October-December), and a two hour meeting once a month for the remainder of the school year (January-May). Also, the teachers have one instructional session videotaped every month for review by the instructional coordinator and researchers, who provide feedback about instructional techniques during the inservice meetings.

Classroom Level Instruction

We document classroom instruction practices in the schools through systematic classroom observations. The goal of these observations is to document the frequency and duration of occurrence of instructional activities that are characteristic of each of the two general approaches to reading instruction. A 90-minute observation on the minute is made during core reading instruction time for each teacher with children participating in the study three times during the school year.

Assessments

Children are assessed on their development of reading and reading-related skills four times yearly in two-month intervals. At the end of the year, norm referenced assessments of academic skills are obtained.