Intervention and the Essentials of Assessing, Preventing and Overcoming Reading DIfficulties

This is my fourth entry on this text.

David A. Kilpatrick's book, Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties, ends with his discussion of how to prevent and remediate reading problems. An important thing to keep in mind is his use of the simple reading theory which explains reading success as the product of word reading skills and language skills. Students who demonstrate language issues should be addressed with ENL services if they are English language learners or the services of a speech language pathologist (SLP) as approprriate. Many of the school district SLPs I have encountered at the elementary level are excellent at working with articulation issues, but demonstrate varying skill and attention to other language issues. Attention to receptive and expressive vocabulary grammar, background knowledge, and semantics is important when a student's poor reading levels cannot be explained by word level concerns.

As a prevention approach he encourages kindergarteners be exposed to phonemic awareness and letter sound training. Some commercial programs that address these issues are Florida Center for Reading Research Phonological Awareness Program (online and free), Road to the Code, Rosner Phonological Awareness Training Program, Interactive Strategies Approach, Ladders to Literacy, Words their Way, Equipped for Reading Success. At both the Tier 1 and Tier 2 levels, these are best implemented in small groups. In order to address potential language related reading difficulties he suggests shared book reading, literacy orientated language programs, vocabulary development and Developing Language and Literacy (Carroll, et al, 2011). The chapter on prevention provides the research base behind these programs as well as descriptions of them.

He suggests deep assessments to determine the specific cause of any challenges before implementing any intervention. Because the goal of intervention is to catch students up, he advocates the use of highly effective programs as measured by growth in standard scores. Unfortunately many students are given less effective interventions. The chart below categorizes word level intervention approaches that are commonly used.

	Minimal –modest growth 0-6 standard score point improvement	Highly successful 12-25 standard score point improvements
Elements included	Limited to a few areas of word reading- phonics, phonemic awareness to blending or other (ex. Irlen lenses only address visual fatigue components)	·         Eliminate phonological awareness deficits and teach to the advanced level ·         Teach and reinforce phonics skills and decoding ·         Provide opportunities to read connected text
Programs	·         Orton-Gillingham ·         Wilson ·         Read 180 ·         System 44 ·         Repeated Readings ·         Flashcards ·         Reading Recovery ·         Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI) ·         Fast ForWord ·         Failure Free Reading ·         Great Leaps ·         Irlen Lenses ·         Visual Tracking Training  ·         Learning Styles	·         Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing Program (LiPS) ·         Phono-Graphics ·         Discover Reading ·         Read, Write, Type ·         Equipped for reading Success

Again, he describes the programs with indications of why they are or are not highly effective. Even with highly effective programs, some students will not make significant progress.  15-20 hours of intervention should reveal  how a student will respond. RTI was introduced to special education based on the LiPS, Phono-Graphics and Discover Reading research.

He provides a list of components for effective language related interventions (those impacting comprehension). Importantly, students with language related issues should receive evaluations and appropriate interventions from SLPs. For comprehension skills, he suggests instruction in vocabulary, background knowledge, inferencing, working memory and attention, and strategy skills (ex. summarization, inferencing, comprehension monitoring and identifying main idea. He recommends Developing Reading Comprehension (Clarke et al, 2014) as a resource for assembling elements of an effective comprehension program,

Overall, he suggests using group sizes of a maximum of 1:5 of students with similar needs profiles. Rather than round robin reading (a method with ample evidence of not working to achieve improved reading skills or comprehension of the task at hand) he recommends a solo-choral-solo-choral approach where the changes occur every line of text. This improves attention to task, one of the challenges with round robin reading. He recommends peer tutoring, reciprocal teaching and spelling instruction to support reading.

Of note is his assertion that RTI should not be used as an excuse to delay special education referral. For students at the extreme end of the continuum or who demonstrate resistance to interventions more rapid referral in order to access more intense interventions is an important consideration.

Teachers tend to be woefully separated from the research base that supports the use of a program. Any parent should be able to ask for the research that supports a programs use and receive it in short order. This book provides a good source of that research. Research conducted by the manufacturer of a program must be closely examined. Assertions of research based preformance should be looked at in terms of their effectiveness at doing the job intended. Understanding the research is important so that programs can be selected and implemented with fidelity.