Accelerating Rural Students’ Growth with
the Targeted Reading Intervention
A Dual-Level Intervention for
Rural K-1 Struggling Learners and their Teachers
Targeting instructional match in every interaction…
Steve Amendum
Marnie Ginsberg
Lynne Vernon-Feagans
NREA Research Symposium, 2007
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to improve
the teaching strategies of rural
kindergarten and first grade teachers in
literacy, with a specific focus on
strategies that are effective with
struggling readers who do not make
reading gains using traditional reading
instruction.
Who are we?
• Research project
• Part of the National Research Center on
Rural Education Support
– www.nrcres.org
• Funded by the Institute of Education
Sciences (IES)
Cierra
• “the most challenging student…that I
had in all my years of teaching”
• “I did not know at what moment when
she came in the classroom what that day
was going to be like. And if she was just
going to snap and …lose it – what was
she going to do?”
How did theory and research
inform the TRI design?
Why focus on rural kindergarten and
first grade teachers?
• First years of school
– (Alexander& Entwisle, 1992; Juel, 1988; Vernon-Feagans, Odom,
Pancsofar & Kainz, in press; Vernon-Feagans, Gallagher & Kainz, in
press)
• Rural teachers’ experience/access
– (GAO report, 2004; Lee & Burkham, 2003)
• Satisfaction/preschool experiences
– (Israel, 2004; Vernon-Feagans et al., in press)
Why focus on struggling learners?
• Rate of progress below expectations
– (Pianta, 2001; Meisels, 2001)
• NCLB spotlight
• Impacts behavior
Why focus on literacy?
• Foundation for subsequent academic learning
– (Lyon et al., Snow, Burns & Griffin; 1998; VernonFeagans, 1996)
• End of first grade decoding
accounts for 40% of reading comprehension
during secondary school
– (Foorman et al., 1997)
What is the TRI and why is it
unique?
What is the
Targeted Reading Intervention?
• For struggling K-1
students
• Intensive, diagnostic
reading instruction
• Daily
• Given by the
classroom teacher
• One-on-one  small
groups
• Rapid reading growth
What makes the TRI unique?
•
•
•
•
Intensive collaborative consultation
Individual diagnostic teaching model
Classroom teacher tutors
Teacher-student relationships
What makes the TRI unique?
• Real reading from
the start
– Always in the context
of words
– Letter-sound
knowledge
– Mapping sounds to
print
• Low
cost/adaptability
TRI framework
Re-Reading for Fluency
(~2+ minutes)
Word Work
(~8+ minutes)
Guided Oral Reading
(~5+ minutes)
TRI Extensions
TRI framework
Re-Reading for Fluency
(~2+ minutes)
TRI Extensions
TRI framework
Word Work
(~8+ Minutes)
TRI Extensions
Initial word work strategies
Word Work
(~8+ minutes)
– Segmenting
Words
– Change One
Sound
– Read, Write, &
Say
– Pocket Phrases
Word Work example: Change One
Sound
TRI framework
Guided Oral Reading
(~5+ minutes)
TRI Extensions
Guided Oral Reading examples
What makes the TRI professional
development unique?
•
•
•
•
Summer institute
Weekly TRI Team meetings
Monthly workshops
Ongoing collaborative consultation
What makes the TRI Professional
Development unique?
Ongoing collaborative consultation:
• TRI Consultant, in NC, provides support all year
• On-site Consultant, for K-1 teachers
– Facilitates the TRI Professional Development process
• Bi-weekly individual consultation
– Via webcam
– Focus on the TRI session and the specific student’s needs
• Weekly or bi-weekly problem-solving meetings
– driven by TRI diagnostic teaching and a problem-solving
process
What makes the TRI professional
development unique?
What makes the TRI professional
development unique?
Preliminary TRI Results
Three studies: TRI in rural lowwealth schools
• Study 1
– one semester TRI intervention
– non-Reading First schools
– 168 K-1st children
• Study 2
– two semester TRI intervention
– Reading First schools
– 170 K-1st children
• Study 3
– in-depth case study of TRI instruction
– one teacher and 1st grade student
Research design: Study 1 and
Study 2
• Randomly assigned schools to intervention or
control
• All kindergarten and first grade classrooms
– 5 focal children in each classroom were randomly
selected from those children identified by the teacher
as struggling learners
– 5 non-focal children in each classroom were randomly
selected from those children identified by the teacher
as not struggling learners
Study 1--Key findings
• Struggling students who receive the TRI with
adequate implementation
– greater growth in the Woodcock-Johnson
Letter/Word ID subtest
– greater growth in the Peabody Picture Vocabulary
Test.
• No K-1 children retained in experimental
school
– 10 retained in control schools
Study 2--Key findings
• Struggling students identified to receive the
TRI
– greater growth in the Woodcock-Johnson Basic
Reading cluster
– greater growth in the Woodcock-Johnson
Letter/Word ID subtest
• Struggling students who receive the TRI with
adequate implementation
– greater gains in their teachers’ ratings of their
literacy skills
Study 3
• One first grader, “Cierra”
– Struggled with reading and
academics
• Pre-primer reading
instructional level
– Exhibited serious behavior
problems
• TRI instruction
March 10, 2006 thru
May 10, 2006
Study 3—Key findings
 Dramatic improvement in multiple areas
– Phonemic awareness
– Phonics knowledge
– Oral reading fluency
– Instructional reading level
– Self-selected reading practice
– General classroom behavior
– General classroom performance
– Teacher-student relationship
Phonemic awareness improvements
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
3/10/2006
3/24/2006
4/7/2006
Phoneme Segmentation Fluency
4/21/2006
Nonsense Word Fluency
correct
Number
Correct
Sounds
Identified
Phonics knowledge improvements
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
March 10
March 27
Date
3-May
Oral reading fluency
improvements
70
Words Correct Per Minute
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
3/10/2006
3/17/2006
3/24/2006
3/31/2006
4/7/2006
Date
4/14/2006
4/21/2006
4/28/2006
Instructional reading level
Improvements
• March 10
– Pre-primer reading instructional level
(94% accuracy)
• April 11
– First-grade reading instructional level
(90% accuracy)
Self-selected reading practice
3.5
Tests Taken per Day*
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
Nov
11/05
Dec
12/05
Jan
1/06
Feb
2/06
Mar 1-20
Mar 21- Apr
3/1-3/20
3/21-4/24
24
One teacher’s experience…
Final thoughts
• TRI = effective early
intervention
• TRI = effective
professional
development
processes
• Flexible, sustainable
& portable
For further information…
• Steve Amendum
– samendum@email.unc.edu
• Marnie Ginsberg
– mginsber@email.unc.edu
The
Targeted
Reading
Intervention
Model
The Interaction of Decoding &
Sight Words