The Targeted Reading Intervention

1. The Targeted Reading Intervention Measuring the Match between Teacher Literacy Instruction and Child Literacy Skills: The Importance of Individualized Instruction Mary Bratsch-Hines, Justin Garwood, Cheryl Varghese, & Lynne Vernon-Feagans LRA December 4, 2013

2. Symposium Purpose • Provide context: • Why we should capture instructional match • The Targeted Reading Intervention (TRI) • Describe TRI’s IM measure: • How we collected data • How we coded data • Provide a video example of an actual IM task • Break into small groups to discuss our measure and IM more generally UNC FPG CHILD DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE Targeted Reading Intervention www.targetedreadingintervention.org

3. Teachers and Their Struggling Readers Early reading achievement is critical for children’s later schooling success (Juel, 1988; Foorman et al., 1998). Yet, 74% of fourth-graders who scored below the 25th percentile in reading came from low-income families (NAEP, 2011). Classroom teachers are the professionals who deliver most of the reading instruction and are on the front line of the tiered system of intervention (Haager et al, 2007). Yet, studies show that the classroom teacher may not be very effective in helping struggling readers (Al Otaiba & Fuchs, 2006; Garet et al., 2008). www.targetedreadingintervention.org UNC FPG CHILD DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE Targeted Reading Intervention

4. The Importance of Individualizing Instruction Growing evidence supports individualizing instruction and ongoing literacy support as key ways to help classroom teachers deliver better instruction to struggling readers (Scanlon et al., 2008). We define this as Instructional Match (IM): Teacher’s individualized instruction matched to children’s reading skill level. The concept of IM moves teachers beyond scripted instruction to differentiated instruction. www.targetedreadingintervention.org UNC FPG CHILD DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE Targeted Reading Intervention

5. Benefits of Instructional Match Why IM is important: Within a classroom, children have a range of skills and respond differently to different types of instruction (Connor et al., 2009). Child skill level accelerates at different rates across the year, and effective teachers differentially respond to that growth (Juel & Minden-Cupp, 2000; Connor et al., 2009). Global measures of IM have demonstrated strong literacy gains in young children (Connor et al., 2009; Juel & Minden-Cupp, 2000). IM may be especially beneficial for children living in poverty or for children who have lower skill levels (McCartney et al., 2009). www.targetedreadingintervention.org UNC FPG CHILD DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE Targeted Reading Intervention

6. Challenges of Instructional Match As a field, we don’t fully understand teacher’s use and effectiveness of IM strategies: Few reliable measures of instructional match are available. Capturing IM is challenging. www.targetedreadingintervention.org UNC FPG CHILD DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE Targeted Reading Intervention

7. Research Questions Does the implementation of TRI reading strategies in experimental classrooms improve the instructional match strategies that teachers use in working one-on-one with struggling readers compared to control teachers over a one year period? Do gains in child reading correlate with gains observed in the teacher’s instructional match (Garet et al., 2008; Guskey, 1986; Risko et al., 2008)? www.targetedreadingintervention.org UNC FPG CHILD DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE Targeted Reading Intervention

8. The Targeted Reading Intervention The Targeted Reading Intervention (TRI) is a Tier II professional development program for classroom teachers that uses biweekly literacy coaching to promote optimal literacy growth for individual struggling readers (Vernon-Feagans & Ginsberg, 2011). TRI coaching is delivered via webcam technology, where the coach can see and hear the teacher working with an individual struggling reader and give the teacher real-time feedback on her teaching. A series of TRI randomized controlled trials have shown dramatic gains for struggling readers (Amendum et al., 2011; Vernon-Feagans et al., 2010, 2012, 2013). www.targetedreadingintervention.org UNC FPG CHILD DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE Targeted Reading Intervention

9. TRI Participants Ten schools in the rural Southeastern United States Randomized into treatment and control classrooms at the classroom level Teacher participants: Year 1: First grade teachers Year 2: First grade and kindergarten teachers Year 3 (ongoing): Kindergarten teachers Each teacher was asked to complete task at 5 time points First time point was pre-randomization Student participants: 3 struggling readers, 3 non-struggling readers per year 2 non-identified students selected to do IM at each time point www.targetedreadingintervention.org UNC FPG CHILD DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE Targeted Reading Intervention

10. IM Part 1: Preparation Research assistants with TRI asked teachers to identify 3-4 struggling readers not in the study Administered DIBELS to these children Two children chosen based in part on the DIBELS Teachers provided with DIBELS scores www.targetedreadingintervention.org UNC FPG CHILD DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE Targeted Reading Intervention

11. IM Part 1, Continued Teachers were told TRI was interested in how they “teach word identification strategies for this particular student and help the student read and understand a book.” Research assistants provided materials: Letter cards White board Markers Leveled books www.targetedreadingintervention.org UNC FPG CHILD DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE Targeted Reading Intervention

12. IM Materials www.targetedreadingintervention.org UNC FPG CHILD DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE Targeted Reading Intervention

13. IM Part 2: Videotaping Conducted at least 3 days after Part 1 to allow teacher to prepare Laptops used to video-record the IM session Research assistant monitored class if needed www.targetedreadingintervention.org UNC FPG CHILD DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE Targeted Reading Intervention

14. IM Session 15 minutes Word study Book reading www.targetedreadingintervention.org UNC FPG CHILD DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE Targeted Reading Intervention

15. IM Measure Coded desiredand undesired teacher and student behaviors as relevant to teacher instructional match: Frequency codes (whether or not behaviors were observed every 15 seconds Binary codes (whether or not behaviors were observed at all during the session) Global codes (degree of match, distraction, and attention) www.targetedreadingintervention.org UNC FPG CHILD DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE Targeted Reading Intervention

16. Frequency of Behaviors

17. Undesired Behaviors

18. Desired Behaviors

19. Level of Match Frustration/Too Difficult Instructional/Just Right Independent/Too Easy

20. Level of Distraction None/Low (0-1 occurrences) Medium (2-3 occurrences) High (4 or more occurrences)

21. Process of Coding Master coder with 2 other coders Used a project-developed computer program (Snapshot) Cohen’s Kappa used to determine reliability Reliability checks for 15% of videos Minimum Kappa levels of 0.70 www.targetedreadingintervention.org UNC FPG CHILD DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE Targeted Reading Intervention

24. Audience Discussion Questions – Instructional Match Measure Of the codes in our measure, which do you think are most important in capturing IM? Do you see any pattern of how individual codes may fit together to support the concept of instructional match? www.targetedreadingintervention.org UNC FPG CHILD DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE Targeted Reading Intervention

25. Audience Discussion Questions – Instructional Match Is there any construct or behavior relevant to individualized instruction that we have not included? What are the most important child variables to consider when differentiating instruction (e.g., test scores, behaviors)? Is it possible to fully individualize instruction to meet student needs? Why or why not? www.targetedreadingintervention.org UNC FPG CHILD DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE Targeted Reading Intervention

26. Audience Discussion Questions – Instructional Quality Do you think this measure captures high-quality teacher instruction in reading? If so, which components? If not, why not? What would you add? How do you think this measure accounts for teacher responsiveness toward an individual child? How do you think this measure can help understand student-teacher relationships within the context of high quality reading instruction? www.targetedreadingintervention.org UNC FPG CHILD DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE Targeted Reading Intervention

27. Thank you! Questions or comments, contact bratsch@email.unc.edu • The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant # R305A100654-11 to Lynne Vernon-Feagans, PI, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.