A new reading exercise (original) (raw)
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An evaluation of the ‘Switch-on Reading’ literacy catch-up programme
British Educational Research Journal, 2014
This paper is based on one of the first completed studies funded by the Educational Endowment Foundation. EEF was set up in response to repeated demands for clearer evidence on school improvement. The paper presents the results of an intensive 10-week literacy intervention called Switch-on Reading. This was trialled in England as part of a government initiative to assist children below Level 4 literacy while at age 10 to catch-up with their peers on transfer to secondary school. Switch-on took place in 19 Nottinghamshire schools, with 314 Year 7 pupils individually randomised to treatment in the first or second term of school year 2012/13. This is the largest trial so far conducted of this kind of 10-week reading intervention. It was delivered on a one-to-one basis by trained school staff, mostly teaching assistants. The independent evaluation was based on pre and post administration of the New Group Reading Test, and on observations and interviews in schools. The overall result was an effect size of +0.24, based on the pooled standard deviation of the post-test score (and the gain score) for both groups, meaning that the programme made a noticeable positive impact. This effect can be envisaged as suggesting that on average a pupil receiving the intervention would make approximately three additional months' progress over the course of a year compared to similar pupils who did not, at a cost of around £600. The evaluation identified positive results for all groups of pupils (defined by sex, first language, ethnicity, special educational needs, free school meal eligibility and measured attainment at the outset). The trial also illustrates a key role for teaching assistants, and shows the feasibility of the EEF research programme.
The (hard luck) story of a reading programme for young learners
This paper describes Champion Reading, a supplementary reading progrflntme for primary children, pablished in 1996, The paper consists of three parts. The lirst part explains why the project was lqunched, wkat, the reading programme aims to do, and how it is designed to be administered. The second part gives an account of the problems the project team of whom I was one had to contend u'ith and the issues we had'to.negotiate in the course of our producing the programme. The concluding part explains why the programme failed to catch on. Dear little child, this little book Is less a primer than a key To sunder gates where wonder waits Your "Open Sesame"! Rupert Hughes Reading is an open sesame indeed : it opens the door to meaning, thinking and reasoning. It serves as a foundation for all learning and is the basis for the study of every academic subject. In many cases, academic failure can be traced to reading failure.
Effective classroom instructions for primary literacy: A critical review of the causal evidence
International Journal of Educational Research, 2020
In the last two decades there has been a proliferation of proposals for instructional practices, all promising to improve pupils' academic attainment. Many of these approaches have not been robustly or independently evaluated. Schools, enthusiastic to improve their children's academic outcomes, may rely on some of the more popular but untested approaches. It is important to know which approaches are based on evidence of effectiveness, and which are not. Some approaches may be in widespread use and harming individuals' lives either directly, or at the expense of better approaches. This paper summarises and synthesises evidence from research worldwide, concerning literacy teaching in primary schooling, to identify robustly tested teaching pedagogies that were shown to be effective, especially for pupils struggling with reading and writing. The review only considers evidence that has the potential to demonstrate causation. Each included study is assessed in terms of its quality, and whether the intervention offered any benefit. The programmes identified as promising represent the most appropriate evidence-led ways of improving primary literacy, among those that had been evaluated at the time of writing. The strongest evidence of what works for children struggling with literacy includes a range of specific interventions such as Fresh Start, Butterfly phonics, Accelerated Reader, and Switchon Reading or Reading Recovery. It is important to know which approaches to teaching literacy are based on evidence, and which are not. Some may be in widespread use, harming individuals' progress even if only at the expense of better approaches. This paper synthesises evidence from research concerning literacy teaching in primary schooling to identify robustly tested teaching pedagogies shown to be effective, especially for pupils struggling with reading and writing. The review considers evidence that has the potential to demonstrate causation. Each study is assessed in terms of quality, and whether the intervention offered any benefit. The strongest evidence of what works for children struggling with literacy includes a range of specific interventions such as some phonics approaches, Accelerated Reader, and Switch-on Reading/Reading Recovery. 2 that schools know which approaches are not evidence-informed, as these may actually do more harm than good, and which are more promising. In England, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) Teaching and Learning Toolkit provides a potentially useful resource for schools on evidence-led approaches. The Toolkit summarises the evidence for some of the commonly known and tested approaches based on meta-analyses of prior research. Such meta-analyses average the 'effects' across all studies included, and these studies may vary considerably in terms of quality (e.g. level of attrition), phase of education and outcome measures (both type and quality). These quality factors can affect the apparent 'effect' size of an intervention. For example, larger studies are more likely to produce smaller effect sizes than smaller studies (Slavin and Smith 2009), and studies that use measures related to the intervention tend to show bigger effect sizes than those using treatment independent measures (Slavin and Madden 2011). Therefore, averaging effect sizes across studies can mask many issues relating to quality. The authors of the EEF Toolkit are aware of such difficulties, and are taking steps to address them (EEF 2018). Evaluating single studies from scratch takes considerably longer than simply aggregating effect sizes. Consequently, the evidence for a number of widespread classroom practices remains unclear. This paper addresses this problem by considering the evidence from individual studies that evaluate common approaches used in the primary classroom for literacy (notably reading and writing skills), including those meta-analysed without quality control for the Toolkit, to provide a best evidence summary for teachers. Improving primary literacy Improving the literacy of children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, has been a concern of successive governments in England. This concern is partly prompted by the relatively weak performance of children in international comparisons. Only 75% of children in England achieved the expected level in reading, and 78% in writing at the end of primary school (Department for Education [DfE] 2018). The figures are lower for poorer children, eligible for free school meals. This is a problem because literacy is such a fundamental gateway for further study. Pupils struggling to achieve their 'expected' reading level at primary school generally find it difficult to access the full secondary curriculum, which has implications for their subsequent learning (Wolf and Katzir-Cohn 2001, Pikulski and Chard 2005), and later life (Kuczera et al. 2016). Previous reviews have identified a range of strategies for improving reading and writing. Wanzek and Vaughn (2007) and Wanzek et al. (2010, 2013) suggested that interventions for students with reading difficulties and disabilities should be provided early, and via small groups. Marulis and Neuman (2010) suggested that instruction involving trained adults in delivery was most effective in improving pre-K and kindergarten children's oral language development, and for children at risk of reading difficulties (Marulis and Neuman 2013). These studies used researcher-developed measures, with tests related to the intervention, so reducing the trustworthiness of the evidence. Other reports have suggested that traditional methods of phonics and fluency are more effective than using cognitive approaches (Burns et al. 2016). Phonics is the teaching of letter and sound correspondences in an organised, regular, explicit and sequenced manner. It is a common approach to teaching literacy in primary schools in England, and one that is mandated by government. The Rose Report (Rose 2006) suggested that there was no good evidence that the analytic approach was effective, and so proposed greater use of phonics. The DfE (2015) claimed that there was substantial evidence that systematic synthetic phonics approach is the most effective method to teach children to read.
My essay will focus on evaluating whether or not a small-group intervention reading and comprehension programme with four Year 7 boys, all with ALN* or comprehension difficulties, can increase their reading age and text comprehension within a term, in time for their re-sitting of the May NFER test. The goal is to bring each of these four boys to the required reading age and comprehension level set by the Welsh Assembly Government for the KS3 requirement. However, there will be some questions to consider, such as: 1. Can these pupils be properly motivated on their own time to continue their after-school reading, to work towards improvement? 2. Are there specific methods that will be the most effective in helping motivate these boys to read without supervision, and to improve their reading confidence? 3. Does the knowledge of having an ALN, such as dyslexia, lower the pupils’ self-esteem, and therefore become a cause of their current reading age and comprehension level? 4. Is it even possible to raise their reading and comprehension to the appropriate, or nearly to, the level set by the WAG at the end of the term when they sit for their NFER test? I surmise that these questions can only be answered through the course of the assignment, or could not be answered due to time constraints, or the actual nature and methodology used during the study. However, studying a small group of Year 7 boys with reading difficulties to increase their reading age and their comprehension of the texts is a practical analysis that benefits everyone involved.
Evaluation of a Focused Literacy Teaching Programme in Reception and Year 1 classes: child outcomes
British Educational Research Journal, 1999
Systematic observation was carried out in 12 classrooms (six in an innovative literacy programme which was a precursor to the Literacy Hour and six comparison classes) to explore teaching and learning which occurred after an intensive in-service programme for reception teachers. Altogether 216 children were observed in an inner-city authority, each for 15 minutes according to a schedule of time-sampled and event-sampled categories. Teaching behaviours were included in the observations as well as pupils' learning activities related to curriculum areas and also to play or 'domestic classroom' routines. Results showed that children devoted about equal amounts of time to English in the two types of classrooms and that staff-pupil ratios were also similar. There were no differences in the amount of whole class, group or individual learning observed. However, teachers in the intervention classrooms (Focused Literacy Teaching) were more likely to use 'direct teaching' methods which included managing children's activities and using questions to instruct. Teachers in the comparison classes spent more time in 'physical caring'. There were also differences in pupil learning activities. Although there were no differences in the amount of time children read to a teacher in the two types of classroom, children in the literacy programme spent more time reading to one other child, to a small group and on their own. Moreover, children in the literacy programme spent more time in shared reading and writing. In contrast, children in the comparison classrooms spent more time drawing, colouring and playing. Thus, a striking finding was the greater amount of peer literacy learning in the innovative classrooms. Teachers spent time setting up and managing the literacy activities of the groups, although often the groups continued under their own steam once the learning activity had been started. This led to a greater focus on reading, not only as a result of the teacher's direct teaching, but also through collaborative group work and children learning on their own.