The Reading Intervention Programme

Overview

The Reading Intervention Programme is the premier scheme to have arisen from the late 1980s/early 1990s Cumbria Reading with Phonology study. Chapter 6 contains more detailed information regarding the history and evolution of this body of work by the Reading Intervention Team. The Reading with Phonology package combined a highly structured set of finely graded reading books with systematic activities to promote phonological awareness.

The first part of a session was devoted to re-reading a familiar book whilst the teacher kept a running record of the child reading. This allowed for rehearsal of familiar words in different contexts. Phonological activities and letter identification were also involved in the first part of the session, accomplished using a multi-sensory approach (feeling, writing and naming). The second part of the session involved writing a sentence, cutting it up and re-assembling it. The last part of the session introduced a new book. The intervention runs for approximately 20 weeks, with pupils attending sessions twice per week.

Evaluation Summary

Three Primary-level evaluations are presented here. The first was a very tightly designed and administered quasi-experiment, carried out by Peter Hatcher, an educational psychologist in Cumbria LA, and two colleagues from the University of York (Hatcher et al., 1994). This was followed by additional evaluations of the intervention being used widely in Cumbria, following that initial study. The Cumbria studies demonstrated useful impact on reading accuracy and spelling.

In 2011, colleagues working in North Yorkshire supplied data on 720 children who had gone through the programme there between 2005 and 2010. All five cohorts had made substantial to remarkable progress in reading accuracy.

Analysis of the data supplied by the Reading Intervention Team, following use of the programme with pupils with Dyslexia and low attainment (bottom 8% nationally in reading) demonstrated modest to substantial impact on reading accuracy and spelling.