The Effectiveness of Standardized versus
Individualized Interventions in Reading
Melissa Coolong-Chaffin, PhD, NCSP
Michael Axelrod, PhD, LP, NCSP
Kaitlin O’Shea, MSE
Kimberlee Maczko, MSE
Karissa Danes, MSE
University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire
1
Disclosures
• There are no conflicts of interest, financial or
otherwise, associated with this presentation
• Our program is currently
funded by UWEC
Acknowledgements
• Statistical analysis- Kelly O’Shea
• Undergraduate student interventionists
• School partners, staff, and students
Today’s Agenda
• Intervention Selection within RtI
• Academic Intervention Clinic at UWEC
• Method
• Great Leaps versus BEA
• Results
• Discussion
• Implications for practice
• Questions, comments
Problem Solving Within RtI
~5%
Tier 3
INTENSIVE
Tertiary Prevention:
Further intensified
and individualized
Intervention
~15%
Tier 1
CORE
Primary Prevention:
Schoolwide and
classwide
instruction
Tier 2
SUPPLEMENTAL
Secondary Prevention:
Intensified, validated
intervention
~80% of students
Assessment within a PS Model
• Focuses on answering questions such as
• What skills should we teach?
• How should we teach the skills?
• As opposed to
• Does the student meet eligibility criteria?
• Brief Experimental Analysis allows us to answer the
first two questions, however resource intensive
Questions remain
• How do we select interventions for at risk and high
risk students?
• Is a packaged intervention sufficient, or do at risk
students benefit from an individualized approach?
• Our study explored the following research question:
• Do students who receive interventions indicated by a
BEA make greater gains in oral reading fluency than
students who receive an standardized approach?
Academic Intervention Clinic
at UWEC
• History
• Objectives
1.
2.
Provide brief academic interventions to students
Train undergraduate students to:
•
•
Implement evidence-based interventions with fidelity
Accurately collect outcome data
•
Currently in 3 schools
•
Funded primary through the university’s undergraduate
differential tuition program
Participants
• Second grade students from two schools in small city
in the upper Midwest
• School One, 82% of students receive FRL
• School Two, 46% of students receive FRL
• Referred to an afterschool reading program by their
teachers due to ORF performance below benchmark
• BEA n= 15
• GL n= 19
Procedures
• Students randomly assigned to receive modified Great
Leaps or intervention identified through brief
experimental analysis
• Approximately equal numbers in each school
• Three grade level passages from Formative Assessment
System for Children (FAST) were administered to
establish baseline
• Great Leaps placement test or BEA
• Intervention occurred in 25 minute sessions two times per
week for 7 weeks
Procedures
• Progress was monitored one time per week using
grade level FAST passage (WRCM)
• After 7 weeks of intervention, three passages were
administered as a follow up
Great Leaps
• Standard Treatment Intervention
• Daily practice of reading skills
• Phonological awareness
• Phonics
• Oral Reading Fluency
• Includes modeling, multiple opportunities to practice,
graphing and incentives for increased performance
(Mercer & Campbell, 1998)
Empirical Support for Great Leaps
• Effective for increasing oral reading fluency
• Mercer, Cambell, Miller, Mercer, & Lane (2000)
• Begeny, Schulte, & Johnson (2012)
Great Leaps in Our Study
• Adapted for the study
• More repetitions of the activities
• Filled a 25-minute time period two times per week for
seven weeks
• Three activities each session
• Phonics
• High Frequency Word Lists/Phrases
• Stories
Great Leaps Procedure
• Student reads probe (phonics, high-frequency words or
stories) for one-minute.
• Standard Error Correction Procedure
• Correct errors as they are made
• Review errors at the end of 1-min reading
• Interventionist computes WRCM and tells student the
score
• Mark it on the graph.
• Repeat process 3 times each session for each activity
• Student can earn prize.
Brief Experimental Analysis (BEA)
• Allows us to “test drive” interventions in order to
find one that fits best for an individual student
• Compare multiple interventions to one another
• Helps us identify promising interventions to
implement over time
General BEA Procedure
• Student reads alone to establish baseline
• E.g., CBM-R probe, early reading probe
• Implement intervention using that probe
• Administer probe again after the intervention
• Look at increase over baseline
• Replication
• Extended Analysis
Empirical Support for BEA
• Using BEA to select interventions is an effective
approach to identifying successful interventions.
• Meta-analysis of oral reading fluency - Burns &
Wagner (2008)
• Early Literacy Skills - Pettursdottir et al. (2009)
• Math - Mong & Mong (2012)
• Writing – Parker et al. (2012)
BEA in Our Study
• “Test drive” three different interventions
• Repeated Reading (RR)
• Listening Passage Preview (LPP)
• Incentive
• Attempt to replicate intervention effects by
comparing top two
• Implement “winner” for 7 weeks
WSPA Fall 2013
Repeated Reading
with Error Correction
• Allows us to see if student needs more practice
• Student reads alone to establish baseline
• Student practices reading probe 3 times
• Errors are corrected after each reading
• Student reads alone for one minute while
interventionist records WRCM and errors
Listening Passage Preview
• Allows us to see if the student needs more modeling
at the passage level
• Student reads passage to establish baseline
• Interventionist reads passage to provide a model of
fluent reading (proper pacing and expression)
• Student reads alone for one minute while
interventionist records WRCM and errors
Incentive
• Allows us to see if student isn’t motivated
• Student reads passage to establish baseline
• Student is told she will earn a prize if she “beats her
score” (usually 20% increase)
• Student reads alone for one minute while
interventionist records WRCM and errors
• Count words read correct and errors, give prize if
earned
Nadine
100
BEA
Intervention
90
Correct Words per Minute
80
70
60
Baseline
50
RR+EC
LPP
40
Incentive
30
20
10
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Sessions
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
Ava
BEA
160
Intervention
Correct Words per Minute
140
120
100
Baseline
80
RR+EC
LPP
60
Incentive
40
20
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Sessions
10
11
12
13
14
15
Quality Indicators
• Interobserver agreement- above 95%
• Treatment fidelity- above 95%
Results
• Descriptive Information
• Both groups’ scores generally increased over time.
• The BEA group had higher mean scores at every time point.
• Independent Samples T-Test
• Statistically significant difference in overall WRCM growth
between groups.
• BEA group had a higher overall WRCM growth than the GL
group.
• BEA Mean = 16.80 WRCM Growth
• GL Mean = 4.26 WRCM Growth
• Large effect size - Cohen’s d=.83.
WRCM Scores Over Time
90
Words Read Correctly per Minute (WRCM)
85
80
75
70
BEA
65
GL
60
55
50
45
40
Baseline
Time 1
Time 2
Time 3
Time 4
Time 5
Time 6
Time 7
Follow-Up
Limitations
• Small sample size
• Between groups design
• All of BEA interventions focused on passage reading
fluency
• Great Leaps intervention include fluency practice for
words, phrases, passages
• More research is needed
Implications
• BEA-indicated interventions may be more effective
than a modified version of the Great Leaps
intervention
• Ongoing progress monitoring is always best practice
Implications
• Training
• Time intensive
• May take 45-90 minutes to complete BEA
• Makes this appropriate for Tier 3
• Importance of demonstrating experimental control
in applied settings
• How many demonstrations of experimental effects are
needed?
Questions? Comments?
Contact Information
•
Human Development Center Website:
http://www.uwec.edu/HDC/resources.htm
•
Dr. Coolong-Chaffin
•
•
•
chaffimc@uwec.edu
715-836-3925
Dr. Axelrod
•
•
axelromi@uwec.edu
715-836-5020
References
Begeny, J.C., Schulte, A.C., Johnson, K. (2012). Enhancing instructional problem solving: An
efficient system for assisting struggling learners. New York: The Guilford Press.
Burns, M.K. & Wagner, D. (2008). Determining an effective intervention within a brief
experimental analysis for reading: A meta-analytic review. School Psychology Review, 37(1),
126-136.
Christ, T. J., Ardoin, S., Monaghen, B., Van Norman, E. & White, M. J. (2013).
CBMReading: Technical Manual. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, Department of
Educational Psychology.
Mercer, C. D. & Campbell, K.U. (1998). Great Leaps Reading Kindergarten- Grade 2. Gainsville,
FL: Diarmuid.
Mercer, C.D., Campbell, K.U., Miller, W.D., Mercer, K.D., & Lane, H.B. (2000). Effects of a
reading fluency intervention for middle schoolers with specific learning disabilities.
Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, 15(4), 179-189.