what the research says

When to use repeated reading as an intervention

Vadasy and Sanders ran a study that shows at-risk second and third graders benefit from repeated reading:

These findings suggest when particular types of repeated reading will beneficial. For students performing within the emergent stage of reading fluency, like the second and third graders in the study, there were benefits from rereading the same texts chosen at an instructional level of difficulty. Repeated reading was assisted by trained tutors who provided both a model of fluent reading during two of the rereadings, as well as corrections and feedback during three of the readings

Vadasy, P.F., & Sanders, E.A. (2008). Repeated Reading Intervention: Outcomes and Interactions With Reader Skills and Classroom Instruction. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100 (2), pp. 272-290.

Students at benchmark and above on word reading do not benefit:

… if students enter second or third grade with average or higher word reading skills, a repeated reading interventions is not recommended to boost word reading accuracy or comprehension skills in particular. Students with lower word reading skills at onset, however, will likely benefit from this type of intervention on reading accuracy and fluency rate gains

Vadasy, P.F., & Sanders, E.A. (2008). Repeated Reading Intervention: Outcomes and Interactions With Reader Skills and Classroom Instruction. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100 (2), pp. 272-290.

How kids learn to summarize text

Researchers Brown and Day examined the developmental sequence of six strategies students use to summarize text (my emphasis):

Two of the six rules involve deletion of unnecessary material. One should obviously delete material that is trivial, and even grade school children are quite adept at this if the form and content of the material is familiar (Brown, Day, & Jones, in press; Johnson, 1978). One should also delete material that, although it is important, is also redundant. Kintsch and van Dijk’s system also includes these two deletion rules. Two of the rules of summarization involve the substitution of a superordinate term or event for a list of items or actions. For example, if a text contains a list such as: cats, dogs, goldfish, gerbils, and parrots, one can substitute the term pets. This is Kintsch and van Dijk’s generalization rule. Similarly, one can substitute a superordinate action for a list of subcomponents of that action, i.e., John went to London, for: John left the house, John went to the train station, John bought a ticket, etc., etc. This is roughly comparable to Kintsch and van Dijk’s (1978) integration rule. The two remaining rules have to do with providing a summary of main constituent unit of text, the paragraph. The first rule is – select a topic sentence, if any, for this is the author’s summary of the paragraph. The final rule is – if there is no topic sentence, invent your own.

Brown, A.L., & Day, J.D. (1983). Macrorules for Summarizing Texts: The Development of Expertise. Center for the Study of Reading, Illinois University

What they found may help teachers identify the developmental stage a student is at:

“…a clear developmental pattern was found, with deletion rules emerging first followed by superordination [substitution] and then selection. Invention, the most difficult rule, was late developing. We believe that the five rules differ in their ease of application because they demand different degrees of text manipulation on the part of the learner, and perhaps because they depart to a greater or lesser extent from the already existing strategy favored by the younger participants. This has been called the copy-delete strategy (Brown, 1981; Brown, Day, & Jones, in press) because fifth and seventh grade and junior college students summarize texts primarily by deleting, or copying near verbatim the words actually present in the text

Brown, A.L., & Day, J.D. (1983). Macrorules for Summarizing Texts: The Development of Expertise. Center for the Study of Reading, Illinois University

Intriguingly, they suggest that an earlier, over-simple strategy may need to be actively unlearned in order to progress to the later strategies:

““…there is evidence that partially adequate strategies such as copy-delete are not just way-stations on the road to expert strategies; they may actually impede progress...We would like to argue that partially adequate strategies such as copy-delete and knowledge-telling are maintained by inexperienced writers because they do result in intermittent reinforcement and are recognizable attempts to get the job done. The process of development is not just one of acquiring increasingly more refined and sophisticated strategies; development involves the systematic consolidation of mature strategies, combined with the rejection of plausible but less efficient habits

Brown, A.L., & Day, J.D. (1983). Macrorules for Summarizing Texts: The Development of Expertise. Center for the Study of Reading, Illinois University

Small group interventions 15 to 30 minutes long get greatest effects

In a meta-analysis examining the role of time (both frequency and duration) on the effectiveness of kindergarten interventions, Cavanaugh et al. (2004) documented the great variability of intensity of time in effective interventions. In terms of intensity of time implementation, three of the five interventions that were implemented for fewer than 15 minutes per instructional session resulted in large effect sizes, 1.0 or higher. The majority of interventions were implemented from 15 to 29 minutes (n = 17) and had moderate to large effect sizes. The authors concluded that interventions delivered in small-group formats either two to three times per week or daily for a minimum of 15 to 30 minutes produced the greatest effects.

Harn, B.A., Linan-Thompson, S., Roberts, G. (2008). Intensifying Instruction: Does Additional Instructional Time Make a Difference for the Most At-Risk First Graders? Journal of Learning Disabilities, 41 (2) p.115-125.

Small groups of 3-5 are as effective as 1-to-1 instruction

Although not conclusive for making individual student-level decisions, there is compelling research indicating that instruction provided to groups of 3 to 5 students is as effective as 1-to-1 instruction, even for the most at-risk students (Elbaum, Vaughn, Hughes, & Moody, 2000).

Harn, B.A., Linan-Thompson, S., Roberts, G. (2008). Intensifying Instruction: Does Additional Instructional Time Make a Difference for the Most At-Risk First Graders? Journal of Learning Disabilities, 41 (2) p.115-125.

Scripted vs explicit instruction

To illustrate the difference in scripted versus explicit, Torgesen et al. (2001) compared the efficacy of a highly scripted reading program with a clearly defined scope and sequence with an approach that taught the alphabetic principle explicitly but spent more time reading and writing in context. There were no significant differences in outcomes for a group of elementary school children with severe reading disabilities (see also Wise, Ring, & Olson, 2000).

Stuebing, K.K., Barth, A.E, Cirino, P.T., Franis, D.J., et al. (2008). A Response to Recent Reanalyses of the National Reading Panel Report: Effects of Systematic Phonics Instruction Are Practically Significant. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100 (1), p. 123-134

IOW, tight scripting does not provide an advantage over explicit-but-not-scripted instruction. It's the explicitness that provides the benefit, not the scripting. More evidence of the same:

Mathes et al. (2005) compared two comprehensive small-group tutorial interventions based on (a) a direct instruction model with a scripted lesson plan and a well-developed scope and sequence with use of decodable text; and (b) a guided reading intervention in which instruction in the alphabetic principle was explicit (i.e., based on a plan for introducing phonics elements and in which the information was directly presented to the child) and done for about 20% of the instructional period, but unscripted and with the use of leveled texts instead of decodable texts. No major differences in reading outcomes for first graders at risk for reading difficulties were apparent when these two comprehensive programs were compared.

Stuebing, K.K., Barth, A.E, Cirino, P.T., Franis, D.J., et al. (2008). A Response to Recent Reanalyses of the National Reading Panel Report: Effects of Systematic Phonics Instruction Are Practically Significant. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100 (1), p. 123-134

Reading non-fiction to pre-reading children

…a small but growing body of research raises the possibility that young children are able to interact successfully with expository forms of text.

…these results suggest that reading aloud may be an effective vehicle for exposing young children to expository books in early childhood settings.

Duke, N., & Kays, J. (1998). “Can I say ‘Once Upon a Time’?” Kindergarten Children Developing Knowledge of Information Book Language. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 13, no. 2 p. 295–318

Time for more informational, non-narrative read-alouds in Kindergarten?

On practice (opinion)

Ogden Lindsley (1992) contrasted the emphasis on practice in American sports with the neglect for practice in American schools. Whereas fluency researchers have suggested that at least 70% of instructional time be devoted to skill practice, the pressure on teachers to move rapidly through a curriculum results in children receiving only brief exposure to a wide variety of skills, few of which are practiced to mastery (Binder, 1996).

Daly, E., Marten, B., Barnett, D., Witt, J., Olson, S. (2007). Varying Intervention Delivery in Response to Intervention: Confronting and Resolving Challenges with Measurement, Instruction and Intensity. School Psychology Review, 36 (4), p. 562-581

Identifying learning goals is difficult

One striking factor was that teachers, no matter the level of experience with content, consistently muddled learning goals with the context for how the learning would be achieved.

Heritage, M. (in press). Learning Progressions: Supporting Instruction and Formative Assessment.

On modeling

Espin and Deno (1989) compared the effects of modeling (i.e., examiner models accurate reading of the entire word) versus prompting (i.e., examiner says the initial part of a word) on sight word reading. They found that modeling was more effective at increasing accuracy of responding than prompting...

...Word Drill (i.e., having the student repeat a misread word following examiner modeling of accurate reading) has been shown to increase accuracy and fluency rates relative to no error correction procedures, modeling with one response repetition only, and phonic analysis (a prompting strategy for eliciting accurate responding) (Rosenberg, 1986)...

...Shapiro and McCurdy (1989) found that training words in isolation using modeling and prompting did not lead to generalization effects for passage reading...

...One study found that having subjects repeat the entire phrase containing a misread word (examiner modeling + phrase drill) was more effective at improving oral reading fluency in isolation and in the context of passage reading than having the experimenter model accurate reading of the misread word or even having the subject repeat only the error word several times (O'Shea, Munson, & O'Shea, 1984)...

...Although instructing in isolation through modeling and prompting may be the most efficient means to promote accuracy (Grossen & Carnine, 1991), fluency building should probably occur in the natural context of skill use (e.g., in passages) to promote generalization more rapidly

Daly, E. J., III, Lentz, F. E., & Boyer, J. (1996). The instructional hierarchy: A conceptual model for understanding the effective components of reading interventions. School Psychology Quarterly, 11, 369–386.