Paula Clarke, Emma Truelove, Maggie Snowling, Charles Hulme

1. Paula Clarke, Emma Truelove, Maggie Snowling, Charles Hulme

2. Outline of Presentation Poor Comprehenders Aims of the York READing for MEaning Project Project Design Designing the Interventions Participant Selection & Measures (Very!)Preliminary Findings

3. Poor Comprehenders Average word readers but poor at reading comprehension 10% of normal population Unnoticed in the classroom Persistent difficulties (Ehrlich, Remond and Tardieu, 1999; Cain and Oakhill, 2006)

4. In studies where vocabulary is allowed to vary poor comprehenders have shown: Weaknesses in: Narrative skills (Cragg & Nation, 2006) Vocabulary (Nation, Clarke & Snowling, 2001; Stothard & Hulme, 1992) Grammatical development (Nation, Clarke, Marshall & Durand,�2004; Nation & Snowling, 2000) Broader language skills (Nation, Clarke, Marshall & Durand,�2004) excluding phonology Verbal working memory (Nation, Adams, Bowyer-Crane & Snowling, 1999)

5. In studies where vocabulary is similar across groups poor comprehenders have shown: Weaknesses in: Narrative skills (Cain & Oakhill, 1996; 2006) Inferencing (Oakhill, 1984; Cain & Oakhill, 1999) Verbal working memory (Cain & Oakhill, 2006; Cain, 2006) Suppression/ Inhibition (Cain, 2006) Comprehension monitoring (Erlich, Remond & Tardieu 1996; Yuill, Oakhill & Parkin, 1989; Cain, Oakhill & Bryant, 2004; Oakhill, Hart & Samols, 2005) But no deficits in: Grammatical development (Oakhill, Cain & Bryant, 2003; Cain & Oakhill, 2006)

8. The York READ ME project has both practical and research based aims: Compare 3 theoretically motivated approaches to improving reading comprehension skills with an untreated waiting control group. To address the objectives of the primary framework (NLS) and equip teaching assistants with a wide range of skills and materials, useful in supporting children with reading comprehension and oral language difficulties.

9. Theoretical Rationale The strong relationship between listening comprehension and reading comprehension suggests that activities to promote oral language comprehension should lead to improvements in both reading and listening comprehension. An alternative view is that training might be most effective if it directly targeted written language comprehension skills, such as comprehension monitoring and inferencing from text. There may be advantages in a combined approach that makes explicit links between oral language training (e.g., teaching new vocabulary) and reading comprehension skills (e.g., monitoring of texts containing new vocabulary).

10. Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT)

11. Project Timetable

12. Designing the Interventions

14. Palinscar & Brown,1985; Palinscar,1986 Reciprocal teaching refers to an instructional activity that takes place in the form of a dialogue between teachers and students regarding segments of text The teacher and students take turns assuming the role of the teacher in this dialogue

15. Design Features Emphasis placed on routine components with varied activities Activities and concepts introduced gradually and counterbalanced within and across all programmes Built around a passage or theme to unify the activities A variety of texts including fiction, non-fiction and poetry Opportunities for consolidation and reflection throughout the programme rather than in specific sessions

16. Oral Language Programme

17. Text Comprehension Programme

18. Session Structure

19. Combined Programme The COM Programme combines all eight components connecting oral language and text-based activities in an integrated and naturalistic approach Components and activities were balanced across the programme rather than within each session, however all sessions contained both reading and listening comprehension to support complementary components e.g. text comprehension ? inferencing

20. Links to Primary Framework (NLS) Understanding & interpreting texts

21. Links to Primary Framework (NLS) 2. Engaging & responding to texts

22. Links to Primary Framework (NLS) 3. Text structure and organisation

23. Intervention delivery

24. Treatment Fidelity Detailed, prescriptive manual and pre-prepared worksheets, readers and resources Fortnightly tutorials Opportunity to monitor delivery of programmes by discussing experiences, ideas and observations. Some sessions took the form of top up training in which we focused on particular components of the programmes. Observations Each TA was observed by a member of the research team at least twice in each intervention block. Careful records were kept and onsite feedback and support was given. Filmed sessions Five TAs gave us permission to film teaching sessions.

25. Participant Selection & Measures

26. Screening Group NARA-II (Form 1) Listening Comprehension (multi choice version created by Durand, Hulme, Larkin & Snowling, 2005) WORD Spelling Ravens Matrices Non-verbal IQ Individual NARA-II (Form 2) Reading Comprehension TOWRE Reading Efficiency

27. Criteria for inclusion in the study Primary criterion - discrepancy in standard score points between NARA II reading comprehension and TOWRE real word reading efficiency. Only included children with NARA II reading accuracy standard scores of 85 and above and NARA II reading comprehension scores of 105 and below. Of these children, we selected eight children within each school with the greatest discrepancies.

28. Summary of Selected Sample

29. Overview of Measures 1 Primary Outcome Measures WIAT II Reading Comprehension Children read (aloud or silently) a range of passages and sentences (narrative, adverts, non-fiction information etc.) Includes literal, inference and vocabulary dependent question types. NARA II Reading Comprehension (Form 2 at pretest, Form 1 at post test) TORCH Reading Comprehension* Silent reading. Comprehension assessed using a cloze procedure. Responses require a range of skills including inferencing and vocabulary knowledge.

30. Overview of Measures 2 Standardised Measures

31. Overview of Measures 3 Standardised Measures and Rating Scales

32. Overview of Measures 4 Bespoke Measures

33. Preliminary Results

34. Primary Outcome Measures WIAT II Reading Comprehension Data collection complete

35. Primary Outcome Measures WIAT II Reading Comprehension Data collection complete

36. Primary Outcome Measures NARA II Reading Comprehension � (pre test Form 2, post test Form 1) So far, data from 13/20 schools

37. Conclusions A substantial minority of primary school children experience specific difficulty with reading comprehension We have demonstrated that a 20-week intervention programme can produce significant gains in reading comprehension skills Preliminary evidence suggests that oral language training is an important component of effective intervention for reading comprehension difficulties The approaches we have developed meet the objectives of the NLS and can be delivered successfully by trained and supported TAs

38. Thank you! To our team of teaching assistants To our research assistants, placement students and liaison group To the children!

39. Additional Information

40. Next steps

41. TAs Very positive comments about tutorials and observations Everyone said they felt well supported by the team �It took a lot of stress away knowing you could ask the question � however daft it sounded and to receive tips and ideas for the weeks we were about to prepare/deliver. Thanks a lot!� Children Parents 93% � say the children have loved taking part 79% � say their children have spoken to them about the project weekly 86% � have observed positive changes in terms of their child�s confidence 50% � have observed positive changes in their child�s attitude towards reading Feedback

42. Session Structure � COM programme

43. Session Structure � COM programme

44. Session Structure � COM programme

45. Interventions for poor comprehenders Yuill and Oakhill (1988) developed an intervention to specifically target inferencing skills Skilled and less skilled comprehenders aged 7 years each received 7 sessions of training in 1 of 3 intervention conditions In the inference training condition gains in individual scores on the NARA were on average 17 months

46. Oakhill and Patel (1991) focused on mental imagery training as a potential method for improving the reading comprehension skills of poor comprehenders 22 poor comprehenders and 22 good comprehenders, taught in small groups were instructed using representational and transformational drawings, to picture stories in their minds They were then encouraged to use their mental images to answer comprehension questions They found that poor comprehenders benefited more from imagery training than good comprehenders and suggested that �the ability to use imagery strategies may give poor comprehenders a way of helping to circumvent their memory limitations��(p.114)

47. Johnson-Glenberg (2000) compared a verbally based reciprocal teaching (RT) program (Palincsar & Brown, 1984) to a visually based visualising/verbalising program (Bell, 1986) 59 poor comprehenders assigned to either one of the training programmes or a control group. Small group teaching took place over 16 weeks. They found that both training programmes were similarly effective in improving poor comprehenders� reading, language and memory skills associated with reading comprehension ability. They suggested that a combination of the two strategies might be particularly powerful.