The purpose of this paper is to describe what we know and what we still need to learn about literacy intervention for children who experience significant difficulties learning to read. We reviewed 14 ...meta-analyses and systematic reviews of experimental and quasi-experimental studies published in the last decade that examined the effects of reading and writing interventions in the elementary grades, including research focused on students with reading difficulties and disabilities, including dyslexia. We attended to moderator analyses, when available, to further refine what we know and need to learn about interventions. Findings from these reviews indicate that explicit and systematic interventions focusing on the code "and" meaning dimensions of reading and writing, and delivered one-to-one or in small groups, are likely to improve foundational code-based reading skills, and to a lesser extent, meaning-based skills, across elementary grade levels. Findings, at least in the upper elementary grades, indicate that some intervention features including standardized protocols, multiple components, and longer duration can yield stronger effects. And, integrating reading and writing interventions shows promise. We still need to learn more about specific instructional routines and components that provide more robust effects on students' ability to comprehend and individual differences in response to interventions. We discuss limitations of this review of reviews and suggest directions for future research to optimize implementation, particularly to understand "for whom" and "under what conditions" literacy interventions work best. For the corresponding grantee submission, see ED623078.
•Interactive spelling activities facilitate reading acquisition.•Interactive spelling activities prevent reading failure.•Interactive spelling activities impacts significantly phonological awareness ...skills.
This study aimed to assess the impact of an interactive spelling program on reading acquisition of children at risk of developing reading difficulties as well as to assess its effect on spelling and phonemic awareness. From an initial pool of 144 first-grade children attending four Portuguese primary schools, 53 children with low performances in letter knowledge and phonemic awareness tasks, and considered by their teachers to be at risk of developing reading difficulties, were selected. These children were randomly assigned to three groups: an experimental group that underwent an interactive spelling program, a comparison group that underwent a phonological awareness program, and a control group that underwent a copying program. The programs, conducted in pairs, comprised 12 sessions lasting 20 to 30 min twice a week. The pretest and posttest included word reading, word spelling, and phonemic awareness assessments. Data analysis showed that the spelling group significantly outperformed the other groups across all measures except in the phonemic awareness task, where there were no differences with the phonological group. The word copying group consistently yielded the lowest results. Unlike the other two groups, the posttest results of the experimental group also reached the class average in word reading. For ethical reasons, after the final assessments the control group underwent a version of the interactive spelling program. This study suggests that spelling activities can contribute significantly to reading acquisition and can serve as a valuable pedagogical tool to proactively address challenges in learning to read.
Digital literacy games can be beneficial for children with reading difficulties as a supplement to classroom instruction and an important feature of these games are the instructional supports, such ...as feedback. To be effective, feedback needs to build on prior instruction and match a learner's level of prior knowledge. However, there is limited research around the relationship between prior knowledge, instruction and feedback in the context of learning games. This paper presents an empirical study exploring the influence of prior knowledge on response to feedback, in two conditions: with or without instruction. Thirty‐six primary children (age 8–11) with reading difficulties participated: each child was assessed for their prior knowledge of two suffix types—noun and adjective suffixes. They subsequently received additional instruction for one suffix type and then played two rounds of a literacy game—one round for each suffix type. Our analysis shows that prior knowledge predicted initial success rates and performance after a verbal hint differently, depending on whether instruction was provided. These results are discussed with regards to learning game feedback design and the impact on different types of knowledge involved in gameplay, as well as other game design elements that might support knowledge building during gameplay.
Practitioner notes
What is already known about this topic
Instructional supports, such as elaborative feedback, are a key feature of learning games.
To be effective, feedback needs to build on prior instruction and match a learner's level of prior knowledge.
Prior knowledge is an important moderator to consider in the context of elaborative feedback.
What this paper adds
Providing additional instruction (eg, pre‐training) may act as a knowledge enhancer building on children's existing disciplinary expertise, whereas the inclusion of elaborative feedback (eg, a hint) could be seen as a knowledge equaliser enabling children regardless of their prior knowledge to use the pre‐training within their gameplay.
Highlights the importance of children's preferred learning strategies within the design of pre‐training and feedback to ensure children are able to use the instructional support provided within the game.
Possible implications for pre‐training and feedback design within literacy games, as well as highlighting areas for further research.
Implications for practice and/or policy
Pre‐training for literacy games should highlight key features of the learning content and explicitly make connections with the target learning objective as well as elaborative feedback.
Pre‐training should be combined with different types of in‐game feedback for different types of learners (eg, level of prior knowledge) or depending on the type of knowledge that designers want to build (eg, metalinguistic vs. epilinguistic).
Modality, content and timing of the feedback should be considered carefully to match the specific needs of the intended target audience and the interaction between them given the primary goal of the game.
The research method that the author uses in this research is a qualitative method with the approach in this research is a case study approach to produce descriptive data in the form of written or ...spoken words from subjects/actors and behaviors that can be observed with the aim of knowing in depth and trying to find the underlying meaning regarding students' initial reading difficulties. There were 7 informants in the interview where 2 people became key informants, namely students who had difficulty reading at the beginning, 2 parents of students, 1 homeroom teacher of grade III students and 2 friends from grade III became supporting informants. To find out students' difficulties in beginning reading, researchers made direct observations and conducted interviews. After conducting interviews, the researcher obtained information that of the 32 third grade students at SD Negeri 047166 Sukadame that there are 12 students who already have good reading skills and 20 students who have difficulty in reading. Factors that cause students to have difficulty in beginning reading are physiological, intellectual, environmental and psychological factors.
This paper examines how primary aged children with reading difficulties attend to, understand and act upon different types of feedback within a digital literacy game. A systematic and structured ...video analysis of twenty‐six children's game play was carried out focussing on moments where children made an error and were followed by in‐game feedback. Our findings show that children benefited from outcome feedback, which supported an accurate interpretation of their game performance and prompted children to try again. In contrast, though the elaborative feedback attracted similar levels of attention, children struggled to understand the content, resulting in a reliance on implicit knowledge to correct their next response. Alongside identifying a set of new questions for future research, the study contributes a number of intrinsic and extrinsic recommendations for ensuring children with reading difficulties attend to and comprehend games‐based feedback.
Practitioner notes
What is already known about this topic?
Outcome and elaborative feedback provided in games can scaffold the learner to recognise errors and apply corrective strategies.
Elaborative feedback, in particular, has been evidenced to support the learner's understanding and lead to learning gains, albeit with older populations.
What this paper adds?
An empirical evaluation of how young children who struggle with reading attend to, understand, and respond to feedback in a digital literacy game.
Demonstrates that children attend to the outcome and elaborative feedback to equal degrees, but struggle to understand and apply elaborative feedback due to its metalinguistic complexity.
Implications for practice and/or policy?
Games that embed outcome feedback visually in the target response can enhance the child's attention to, and understanding of, their performance.
Games that offer verbal elaborative feedback require additional instruction to maintain children's focus on the feedback and to support content understanding.
ABSTRACT
The simple view of reading is commonly presented to educators in professional development about the science of reading. The simple view is a useful tool for conveying the undeniable ...importance—in fact, the necessity—of both decoding and linguistic comprehension for reading. Research in the 35 years since the theory was proposed has revealed additional understandings about reading. In this article, we synthesize research documenting three of these advances: (1) Reading difficulties have a number of causes, not all of which fall under decoding and/or listening comprehension as posited in the simple view; (2) rather than influencing reading solely independently, as conceived in the simple view, decoding and listening comprehension (or in terms more commonly used in reference to the simple view today, word recognition and language comprehension) overlap in important ways; and (3) there are many contributors to reading not named in the simple view, such as active, self‐regulatory processes, that play a substantial role in reading. We point to research showing that instruction aligned with these advances can improve students’ reading. We present a theory, which we call the active view of reading, that is an expansion of the simple view and can be used to convey these important advances to current and future educators. We discuss the need to lift up updated theories and models to guide practitioners’ work in supporting students’ reading development in classrooms and interventions.
Teacher self-efficacy to teach reading is positively associated with teacher effort and persistence as well as student performance. To provide effective reading instruction that meets the needs of ...students with reading difficulties, theoretical and empirical evidence suggests teachers need to believe they have the necessary knowledge and skills to do so. The purpose of this study was to explore kindergarten teachers' self-efficacy beliefs related to providing reading instruction to students with reading difficulties. We also aimed to better understand the barriers to and facilitators of kindergarten teachers' reading self-efficacy beliefs. Fifteen kindergarten teachers participated in semi-structured interviews and completed surveys related to sense of efficacy and knowledge for teaching reading. Interviews were analysed using a thematic analytical approach. Findings indicated that kindergarten teachers experience a moderate to high level of self-efficacy in providing reading instruction to students with reading difficulties. However, several themes that emerged from the data focused on barriers to, rather than facilitators of, teacher self-efficacy. Implications are discussed, including ways to cultivate stronger self-efficacy beliefs related to reading instruction for students with reading difficulties.
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