Paula Clarke, Emma Truelove, Maggie Snowling, Charles Hulme

1
Three intervention programmes designed to
improve reading comprehension in poor
comprehenders

Read Me York Reading for Meaning Project

• Paula Clarke, Emma Truelove, Maggie Snowling,
  Charles Hulme

2
Outline of Presentation

• Poor Comprehenders
• Aims of the York READing for MEaning Project
• Project Design
• Designing the Interventions
• Participant Selection Measures
• (Very!)Preliminary Findings

3
Poor Comprehenders

• Average word readers but poor at reading
  comprehension
• 10 of normal population
• Unnoticed in the classroom
• Persistent difficulties
• (Ehrlich, Remond and Tardieu, 1999 Cain and
  Oakhill, 2006)

Nation Snowling, 1997, BJEP
4
In studies where vocabulary is allowed to vary
poor comprehenders have shown

• Weaknesses in
• Narrative skills (Cragg Nation, 2006)
• Vocabulary (Nation, Clarke Snowling, 2001
  Stothard Hulme, 1992)
• Grammatical development (Nation, Clarke, Marshall
  Durand, 2004 Nation Snowling, 2000)
• Broader language skills (Nation, Clarke, Marshall
  Durand, 2004) excluding phonology
• Verbal working memory (Nation, Adams,
  Bowyer-Crane Snowling, 1999)

5
In studies where vocabulary is similar across
groups poor comprehenders have shown

• Weaknesses in
• Narrative skills (Cain Oakhill, 1996 2006)
• Inferencing (Oakhill, 1984 Cain Oakhill, 1999)
• Verbal working memory (Cain Oakhill, 2006
  Cain, 2006)
• Suppression/ Inhibition (Cain, 2006)
• Comprehension monitoring (Erlich, Remond
  Tardieu 1996 Yuill, Oakhill Parkin, 1989
  Cain, Oakhill Bryant, 2004 Oakhill, Hart
  Samols, 2005)
• But no deficits in
• Grammatical development (Oakhill, Cain Bryant,
  2003 Cain Oakhill, 2006)

6

Why is an intervention study needed?

• There is no consensus concerning the core
  cognitive deficit in poor comprehenders
• Research on poor comprehenders has mainly been
  cross-sectional so that the developmental course
  of the disorder is underspecified
• Studies are largely correlational and small in
  scale and have not yet demonstrated causal
  influences

7

• Training studies represent a powerful technique
  for understanding the causal relationships
  between oral and written language skills and
  therefore provide a testing ground for competing
  theories of reading comprehension impairment
• Promising findings have not yet been replicated
• Yuill and Oakhill (1988) inferencing skills
• Oakhill and Patel (1991) mental imagery
• Johnson-Glenberg (2000) verbally based reciprocal
  teaching (RT) program and a visualising/verbalisin
  g program
• Such studies are potentially of great practical
  importance if the interventions evaluated can be
  shown to be effective

8

• The York READ ME project has both practical and
• research based aims
• Compare 3 theoretically motivated approaches to
  improving reading comprehension skills with an
  untreated waiting control group.
• To address the objectives of the primary
  framework (NLS) and equip teaching assistants
  with a wide range of skills and materials, useful
  in supporting children with reading comprehension
  and oral language difficulties.

Oral Language (OL)
Text Comprehension (TC)
Combined (COM)
9
Theoretical Rationale

• The strong relationship between listening
  comprehension and reading comprehension suggests
  that activities to promote oral language
  comprehension should lead to improvements in both
  reading and listening comprehension.
• An alternative view is that training might be
  most effective if it directly targeted written
  language comprehension skills, such as
  comprehension monitoring and inferencing from
  text.
• There may be advantages in a combined approach
  that makes explicit links between oral language
  training (e.g., teaching new vocabulary) and
  reading comprehension skills (e.g., monitoring of
  texts containing new vocabulary).

Oral Language (OL)
Text Comprehension (TC)
Combined (COM)
10
Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT)

• Within each school the same teaching assistant
  delivered the three different intervention
  programmes

11
Project Timetable

Teaching assistant training
Creation of intervention materials
Post-test
Pre-test
Weeks 11 - 20 intervention
Screening
Weeks 1-10 intervention
Oct 06
Oct 07
Oct 08
Oct 09
12
Designing the Interventions

13

Best Practice

• A meta-analysis of reading comprehension
  interventions designed for typically developing
  children reported that the eight most effective
  methods for improving text comprehension are

• Comprehension monitoring
• Co-operative learning
• Graphic/semantic organisers for learning new
  vocabulary
• Story structure training
• Question answering
• Question generation
• Summarisation
• Multiple strategy teaching
• (National Reading Panel, 2000)

14

Reciprocal Teaching

• Palinscar Brown,1985 Palinscar,1986
• Reciprocal teaching refers to an instructional
  activity that takes place in the form of a
  dialogue between teachers and students regarding
  segments of text
• The teacher and students take turns assuming the
  role of the teacher in this dialogue

• The dialogue is structured by the
• use of four strategies

Clarifying
Question Generating
Summarising
Predicting
15
Design Features

• Emphasis placed on routine components with varied
  activities
• Activities and concepts introduced gradually and
  counterbalanced within and across all programmes
• Built around a passage or theme to unify the
  activities
• A variety of texts including fiction, non-fiction
  and poetry
• Opportunities for consolidation and reflection
  throughout the programme rather than in specific
  sessions

16
Oral Language Programme

• 1. Vocabulary
• Multiple Context Learning (Beck, McKeown Kucan,
  2002)
• Graphic Organisers (Nash Snowling, 2006)
• Verbal Reasoning
• Mnemonic Strategies(Levin, 1993 Peters Levin,
  1986 Graves Levin, 1989)
• Illustrations
• 2. Listening Comprehension (RT - Palinscar
  Brown,1985 Palinscar,1986)
• Clarification
• Summarisation
• Prediction
• Question generation
• 3. Figurative Language
• Idioms (Legler, 1991)
• Riddles (Yuill, 1988)

17
Text Comprehension Programme

• 1. Metacognitive Strategies (Cain, 1999)
• Re-read (Garner, et al., 1984)
• Look-back (Garner, 1982)
• Think aloud (Farr Connor, 2004)
• Mental imagery (Oakhill Patel, 1991)
• Explain reflect (McNamara, 2004)
• 2. Reading Comprehension (RT - Palinscar
  Brown,1985 Palinscar,1986)
• Clarification
• Summarisation
• Prediction
• Question generation
• 3. Inferencing from Text (Yuill Oakhill, 1988)
• Lexical inferencing
• Bridging inferencing

18
Session Structure

Oral Language Programme
Text Comprehension Programme
19
Combined Programme

• The COM Programme combines all eight components
  connecting oral language and text-based
  activities in an integrated and naturalistic
  approach
• Components and activities were balanced across
  the programme rather than within each session,
  however all sessions contained both reading and
  listening comprehension to support complementary
  components e.g. text comprehension ? inferencing

20
Links to Primary Framework (NLS)

• Understanding interpreting texts

21
Links to Primary Framework (NLS)

• 2. Engaging responding to texts

22
Links to Primary Framework (NLS)

• 3. Text structure and organisation

23
Intervention delivery

• Two 10-week blocks of intensive training
  delivered by trained teaching assistants
• Each session was 30 minutes
• Children received 2 pair sessions and 1
  individual session per week (1½ hours per week)

24
Treatment Fidelity

• Detailed, prescriptive manual and pre-prepared
  worksheets, readers and resources
• Fortnightly tutorials
• Opportunity to monitor delivery of programmes by
  discussing experiences, ideas and observations.
  Some sessions took the form of top up training in
  which we focused on particular components of the
  programmes.
• Observations
• Each TA was observed by a member of the research
  team at least twice in each intervention block.
  Careful records were kept and onsite feedback and
  support was given.
• Filmed sessions
• Five TAs gave us permission to film teaching
  sessions.

25
Participant Selection Measures

26
Screening

• Group
• NARA-II (Form 1) Listening Comprehension (multi
  choice version created by Durand, Hulme, Larkin
  Snowling, 2005)
• WORD Spelling
• Ravens Matrices Non-verbal IQ
• Individual
• NARA-II (Form 2) Reading Comprehension
• TOWRE Reading Efficiency

27
Criteria for inclusion in the study

• Primary criterion - discrepancy in standard
  score points between NARA II reading
  comprehension and TOWRE real word reading
  efficiency.
• Only included children with NARA II reading
  accuracy standard scores of 85 and above and NARA
  II reading comprehension scores of 105 and below.
• Of these children, we selected eight children
  within each school with the greatest
  discrepancies.

28
Summary of Selected Sample

standard score
selection measures
29
Overview of Measures 1

• Primary Outcome Measures
• WIAT II Reading Comprehension
• Children read (aloud or silently) a range of
  passages and sentences (narrative, adverts,
  non-fiction information etc.) Includes literal,
  inference and vocabulary dependent question
  types.
• NARA II Reading Comprehension (Form 2 at pretest,
  Form 1 at post test)
• TORCH Reading Comprehension
• Silent reading. Comprehension assessed using a
  cloze procedure. Responses require a range of
  skills including inferencing and vocabulary
  knowledge.

30
Overview of Measures 2

• Standardised Measures

31
Overview of Measures 3

• Standardised Measures and Rating Scales

32
Overview of Measures 4

• Bespoke Measures

33
Preliminary Results

34
Primary Outcome Measures

• WIAT II Reading Comprehension
• Data collection complete

pale bars pre test dark bars post test
standard score
group
35
Primary Outcome Measures

• WIAT II Reading Comprehension
• Data collection complete

A
Statistical significance of standard score
gains OL p0.011 TC p0.026 COM
p0.000 Effect sizes (Cohens D) OL 0.61 TC
0.53 COM 0.74
standard score gain relative to control group
intervention programme
36
Primary Outcome Measures

• NARA II Reading Comprehension (pre test Form 2,
  post test Form 1)
• So far, data from 13/20 schools

pale bars pre test dark bars post test
standard score
group
37
Conclusions

• A substantial minority of primary school children
  experience specific difficulty with reading
  comprehension
• We have demonstrated that a 20-week intervention
  programme can produce significant gains in
  reading comprehension skills
• Preliminary evidence suggests that oral language
  training is an important component of effective
  intervention for reading comprehension
  difficulties
• The approaches we have developed meet the
  objectives of the NLS and can be delivered
  successfully by trained and supported TAs

38
Thank you!

• To our team of teaching assistants
• To our research assistants, placement students
  and liaison group
• To the children!

39
Additional Information

40
Next steps
Design control group intervention
Control group intervention
Data collection analysis
6 month follow up testing
Oct 06
Oct 07
Oct 08
Oct 09
41
Feedback

• TAs
• Very positive comments about tutorials and
  observations
• Everyone said they felt well supported by the
  team
• It took a lot of stress away knowing you could
  ask the question however daft it sounded and to
  receive tips and ideas for the weeks we were
  about to prepare/deliver. Thanks a lot!
• Children
• Parents
• 93 say the children have loved taking part
• 79 say their children have spoken to them
  about the project weekly
• 86 have observed positive changes in terms of
  their childs confidence
• 50 have observed positive changes in their
  childs attitude towards reading

• What strategies/activities/games might I try
  after READ ME has finished?
• Ask questions about what I am reading
• Making a story
• Ask mum for word of the week
• I tried dotty dice dilemma at home it did not
  work out

42
Session Structure COM programme

43
Session Structure COM programme

44
Session Structure COM programme

45
Interventions for poor comprehenders

• Yuill and Oakhill (1988) developed an
  intervention to specifically target inferencing
  skills
• Skilled and less skilled comprehenders aged 7
  years each received 7 sessions of training in 1
  of 3 intervention conditions
• In the inference training condition gains in
  individual scores on the NARA were on average 17
  months

46

Interventions for poor comprehenders

• Oakhill and Patel (1991) focused on mental
  imagery training as a potential method for
  improving the reading comprehension skills of
  poor comprehenders
• 22 poor comprehenders and 22 good comprehenders,
  taught in small groups were instructed using
  representational and transformational drawings,
  to picture stories in their minds
• They were then encouraged to use their mental
  images to answer comprehension questions
• They found that poor comprehenders benefited more
  from imagery training than good comprehenders and
  suggested that the ability to use imagery
  strategies may give poor comprehenders a way of
  helping to circumvent their memory
  limitations(p.114)

47

Interventions for poor comprehenders

• Johnson-Glenberg (2000) compared a verbally based
  reciprocal teaching (RT) program (Palincsar
  Brown, 1984) to a visually based
  visualising/verbalising program (Bell, 1986)
• 59 poor comprehenders assigned to either one of
  the training programmes or a control group. Small
  group teaching took place over 16 weeks.
• They found that both training programmes were
  similarly effective in improving poor
  comprehenders reading, language and memory
  skills associated with reading comprehension
  ability.
• They suggested that a combination of the two
  strategies might be particularly powerful.