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COPYRIGHT 2005 Council for Learning Disabilities
In this study we compared the use of two supplemental balanced and strategic reading interventions that targeted the decoding, fluency, and reading comprehension of upper-elementary and middle school students with reading disabilities (RD). All students had significant delays in decoding, fluency, comprehension, and language processing. Two comparable, intensive tutorial treatments differed only in the degree of explicitness of the comprehension strategy instruction. Overall, there was meaningful progress in students' reading decoding, fluency, and comprehension. Gains in formal measures of word attack and reading fluency after five weeks of intervention translated into grade-equivalent gains of approximately half a school year. Analysis of the trends in the daily informal fluency probes translated into a weekly gain of 1.28 correct words per minute. The more explicit comprehension strategy instruction was more effective than the less explicit treatment. Findings are discussed in light of the question of how to maximize the effects of reading interventions for older children with RD.
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Despite increasing evidence that systematic approaches to teaching phonemic awareness and decoding skills within a "balanced" literacy environment positively affects the reading abilities of primary-grade students, a significant number of students enter the upper-elementary and middle school grades with significant deficits in their ability to read (Chall, 2000; Foorman, Francis, Fletcher, Schatschneider, & Mehta, 1994; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998; Torgesen et al., 2001). Many of these students are subsequently identified for special education services. Specifically, of the approximately 2,887,217 school-age children in the United States who are receiving services for learning disabilities (LD) (U.S. Department of Education, 2002), the majority are identified based on deficits in reading (Lyon et al., 2001; Shaywitz, 2003). Some of these upper-elementary and middle school children are so delayed in reading that they not only have deficient comprehension skills, but also struggle with basic, automatic word identification, decoding, and fluency (Fletcher, Morris, & Lyon, 2003).
Instructing these older children with reading disabilities (RD) in both word identification and comprehension presents unique challenges as well as opportunities. On the one hand, there is concern that these students have passed the age when reading skills can most easily be gained, and that their reading deficits have become relatively resistant to remediation by the time they reach the upper elementary grades (Francis, Shaywitz, Stuebing, Shaywitz, & Fletcher, 1996; Lyon et al., 2001). There is the additional challenge of overcoming years of inefficient compensatory strategies and discouragement, and in finding text that is age appropriate and yet accessible. On the other hand, older children provide instructors with the opportunity to take advantage of increasing potential in metacognitive and cognitive strategies, and a growing world knowledge. Increased capabilities and knowledge coupled with the depth of their decoding, fluency, and comprehension deficits suggest that meaningful reading interventions for older children with RD will differ in both intensity and quality from those for primary-age students.
In this study we compared the efficacy of two variations of a balanced reading intervention. The treatments were balanced in that they included a compilation of research-based approaches to accelerating gains in decoding, fluency, and comprehension. While both treatments included direct and strategic instruction in phonemic awareness/analysis, decoding, and fluency, they varied in the degree of explicitness in the comprehension strategy instruction used.
Research on Reading Interventions for Students with RD
In isolating elements of reading, the researcher runs the risk of misrepresenting reading to the learner or missing essential instructional features. This is particularly true for students who have deficits in all areas of reading. In this study, we chose to accept the risks inherent in a multidimensional approach and offered a complex and balanced intervention that we deemed as offering the best chance for success for all participants. In doing so, we drew upon the existing research literature in the areas of decoding, fluency, and comprehension interventions for students with RD. This literature is summarized below.
Phonemic awareness/analysis and decoding. It has become evident in recent years that some form of explicit and direct instruction in phonemic awareness/analysis and decoding skills is essential for students at risk for reading failure and those with RD (Chall, 2000; Foorman et al., 1994; Snow et al., 1998; Torgesen et al., 2001; Torgesen & Wagner, 1998). Effective phonemic awareness/analysis interventions tend to incorporate elements of direct instruction, including direct explanation, modeling, guided practice with continual monitoring and feedback, review, and mastery learning.
Most studies have involved intense interventions of up to SO plus hours, often five times a week, but varying between small group and one-to-one tutorial (Adams & Carnine, 2003). Other interventions, most notably the Orton-Gillingham approach, include multisensory activities, such as voicing a phoneme while tracing (Fernald, 1943; Gillingham & Stillman, 1965). Despite no clear consensus as to why, some evidence suggests multisensory approaches are effective with some children with RD (Thorpe & Borden, 1985). Important differences were found when direct instruction in phonemic awareness/analysis was combined with decoding strategy instruction (Lovett et al., 2000). With decoding strategy instruction, students are taught strategies from which they can choose when they come upon an unknown word. Lovett et al. combined the use of analogous words with other strategies such as peeling off word parts, trying vowel variations, and identifying word parts students already know. These authors compared the combined use of these strategies with direct instruction in phonemic awareness/analysis to instruction in phonemic awareness/analysis alone. They found superior outcomes when phonemic awareness/analysis was combined with decoding strategy training (Lovett & Steinbach, 1997).
Reading fluency. Fluency refers to the reader's degree of speed and accuracy in reading. The greater the degree of automaticity in word recognition and decoding in the context of a passage, the more fluent the reader. An appropriate level of fluency not only allows for the completion of literacy-based tasks in a reasonable time, it is also thought to be related to comprehension. That is, the more fluent the reader, the more cognitive space is allowed for the processing of the meaning of the text (Reynolds, 2000). For this reason, measures of fluency are often used as an index of overall reading growth (Deno, Fuchs, Marston, & Shin, 2001).
Fluency is generally measured by the number of correct words per minute read from a passage (Deno et al., 2001). It is evident from the research that in order for children at risk to improve their reading fluency, they need to practice reading connected text in addition to improving automaticity in word identification and decoding skills (Snow et al., 1998). Guided oral reading, and more specifically passage rereading, has been found to be particularly effective (Rasinski, 1990; Weinstein & Cooke, 1992). One approach to a passage rereading intervention includes students reading a passage alone, reading the same passage again faster with the instructor, and then reading it alone again as fluently as they can. This simple procedure has been shown to significantly increase the fluency of students with RD (Wong, Harris, Graham, & Butler, 2003).
Reading comprehension. Comprehension is reading. Although usually associated with drawing meaning from passages, comprehension occurs at the word, sentence, and passage levels. Students must decode and know the meaning of words in order to comprehend what they read. However, students who can identify words but cannot draw both literal and implicit meaning from sentences and passages are still not reading. A potential danger of focusing heavily and solely on the word level of reading is that children may become relatively fluent word readers without comprehending what they read. That is, they come to believe that decoding is in itself reading. It is this problem that teachers attempt to avoid with the use of a balanced approach to instruction; one that combines decoding and comprehension instruction with ample opportunity for reading and writing whole text. Due, in part, to the difficulties noted earlier in reading instruction for older children with RD, there is a gap in our understanding of how to best teach older children with RD to comprehend what they read.
How Should Strategies Be Taught to Students with RD to Best Improve Their Comprehension?
Students with RD possess inefficient strategies that they use in an inflexible manner (Wong, 1996), are often unaware of the strategies good readers use instinctively (Williams, 2000), and are deficient in the spontaneous use of strategies (Torgesen, 1977). There is general agreement that students with RD need strategy instruction. Thus, two recent reviews of the reading comprehension literature on students with LD have provided strong data suggesting that strategy instruction improves the reading comprehension skills of these students (Gersten, Fuchs, Williams, & Baker, 2001; Mastropieri & Scruggs, 1997). The issue that is not as clear is the level of explicit instruction required for students with RD to maximally benefit their reading comprehension skill. It is this issue that this study was designed to address.
Explicit vs. implicit strategy instruction. Explicit instruction may be conceptualized in at least two ways. On the one hand, explicit instruction involves the overt, teacher-directed instruction of strategies, including direct explanation, modeling, and guided practice in the application of strategies. In addition, explicit strategy instruction may include an overt and systematic transference of the control of strategies from teacher to student. There is a current departure from more explicit forms of strategy instruction to instruction in which students with LD are exposed to a "more natural, constructionist, and less transparent modeling of strategies" (Gersten et al., 2001, p. 308). Duffy (2002) found that the current reading literature leans more toward implicit techniques for instructing students in reading comprehension strategies and focuses minimally on the direct explanation of strategies.
Influential within the debate over explicitness of strategy instruction are Fountas and Pinnell (1996), who have argued that strategies cannot be directly taught. Instead, they propose that teachers provide rich literature experiences for students so that reading strategies can be naturally constructed with teacher support, but not explicit instruction. Beck, McKeown, Sandora, Kucan, and Worthy (1996) disagreed, contending that strategies can be taught, but warned that students' attention may be more focused on the strategies themselves rather than on gaining meaning from the text. According to these authors, therefore, strategy instruction may serve to impede natural construction of meaning from text. They argued that a more fluid discussion of text is likely to produce greater comprehension.
Duffy (2002) characterized Fountas and Pinnell's (1996) approach (guided reading) and similar approaches such as K-W-L (Cart...
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