The effectiveness of a small group intervention for struggling readers in Year 4 : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Educational Psychology, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
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Date
2015
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Massey University
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Abstract
The purpose of the current study was to examine the effectiveness of a small
group literacy intervention for low-achieving readers in Year 4. The present study set
out to determine if an explicit and systematic reading programme will show
accelerated gains in word reading skills that is superior to the conventional school
approach to reading instruction based on the multiple-cues method. The teacher
delivered this intervention as part of the group’s weekly reading instruction over a
ten-week school term. The study employed a modified version of a five-step
instructional programme originally designed by Blachman et al. (2004) during their
intensive reading remediation study with second and third graders with a one year
follow up. The intervention programme focused on the phonological and orthographic
connections in words and text-based reading.
The design of the study involved a whole class screening process using the Dynamic
Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills 6th Edition (Good & Kaminski, 2007). The
intention of the screening process was to select the ten participants with the highest
requirements for strategic teacher support. A pre-test-intervention-post-test design
was used to compare the effects of the intervention programme using a set of word
reading skills. Due to the small sample size of the present study a non-parametric test
(The Mann-Whitney –U Test) and sets of pre-test and post-test difference scores were
used to report statistically significant gains made by the intervention group.
The key findings from the present study suggest that the intervention group gained
significantly better results in terms of word reading measures in addition to some
generalised word reading skills not included in the programme. The findings highlight
the importance of differentiating reading instruction and using explicit teaching in
word reading skills for older struggling readers.
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Keywords
Reading, Remedial teaching, Primary, Group work in education, Group reading