Intervention for Dyslexia - The British Dyslexia Association

subtest. All these children were in schools that had a strong record in reading
instruction. Children were assigned to one of two specific intervention approaches, both
of which explicitly taught phonemic awareness and alphabetic skills, or to a comparison
group that received enhanced classroom instruction (teachers were provided with
progress-monitoring data collected by researchers every three weeks and trained how to
use these data in differentiated instruction). A group of typically achieving children that
received only regular classroom instruction was also studied. One of the interventions
was proactive (daily lesson plans and predetermined sequence of activities) and the
other was responsive (teachers responded to pupils’ needs as they arose). Both
interventions were provided by trained teachers for a total of 117 hours. Reading
development was found to progress more rapidly in both the intervention groups than in
the comparison group or the typically achieving group. The proactive group also grew
more rapidly than the responsive group in phonological awareness (CTOPP), and more
rapidly than the comparison group and the typically achieving group in word reading
fluency (TOWRE) and nonword reading fluency (TOWRE).
At the end of the study, the two intervention groups had significantly higher scores on
phonological awareness, word reading (W-J III) and reading fluency (W-J III) than the
comparison group, but remained below the typically achieving group. No differences
were found between the intervention groups. Mean effect sizes for the proactive group
(compared with the comparison group) were 0.34, and for the responsive group were
0.30. (It should be noted that the comparison group had received enhanced classroom
instruction and therefore somewhat lower effect sizes would be expected than when
comparing treated with untreated at-risk groups.) These results show that both
interventions were effective, over and above the effect of enhancing what was already a
strong reading curriculum. Although neither intervention completely closed the gap
between at-risk pupils and typically achieving pupils, most pupils in both intervention
groups were performing within the average range on standardised measures by the end
of the intervention. Neither intervention proved superior, suggesting that what was most
important was the intensive and explicit teaching of phonemic awareness and alphabetic
skills rather than the structure of the mode of tuition.
2.2.9 Ryder, Tunmer and Greaney (2008)
Ryder et al. (2008) reported on an intervention study with 6- to 7-year-olds who had
been identified by their teachers as struggling readers. They were the lowest performing
readers in four different Year 3 and Year 4 primary classrooms in New Zealand. The
children were randomly assigned to an intervention group or control group (N=12 in
each), a close match being found between the groups on reading accuracy and reading
comprehension at the start of the study. Hence, although this was a relatively smallscale
study, it was exceptionally well controlled. The children in the intervention group
were given explicit instruction in phonemic awareness and phonic decoding skills in
subgroups of three children. The intervention was carried out over 24 weeks and
comprised a sequence of 56 structured lessons of about 25 minutes’ duration, delivered
by a teaching assistant who had been specially trained for this task. The control group
received whole-language instruction by their classroom teacher. Post-test results showed
that the intervention group significantly (p