An Analysis of Two Reading Intervention Programs: How do the Words, Texts, and Programs Compare?

In this study, the student texts and teacher guides of two reading intervention programs for atrisk, first-grade students were analyzed and compared: Fountas and Pinnell's Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI) and Scott Foresman's My Sidewalks (MS). The analyses drew on the framework of available theory and research on beginning texts developed by Mesmer, Cunningham, and Hiebert (2012). This framework includes attention to word-level, text-level, and program-level features. The student texts of the two programs had similar average percentages of single-appearing words and words that can elicit a mental picture (concrete words); however, LLI texts featured more repetition of words, a slightly higher percentage of highly frequent words, and a considerably higher percentage of multisyllable words. MS texts contained a higher percentage of phonetically regular words and a higher lesson-to-text match (LTTM) between phonics elements in teacher guides and the words in student texts. Instructional implications and future research directions are discussed. AN ANALYSIS OF TWO READING INTERVENTION PROGRAMS 3 An Analysis of Two Reading Intervention Programs: How do the Words, Texts, and Programs Compare? Since Response to Intervention (RtI) gained momentum after the reauthorization of IDEA in 2004, school districts looking to support their at-risk readers have been faced with myriad choices among commercially available intervention materials. Publishers of educational materials compete for billions of dollars in revenue annually (“Pearson Leads the Pack,” 2010), and educators can become overwhelmed or confused when faced with the wide variety of materials marketed for at-risk readers. The focus of this study was to identify the differences and similarities in the word-level, text-level, and program-level features of two widely used commercially available intervention programs offered explicitly for beginning readers identified as at-risk for reading failure. We compared first-grade versions of the intervention programs’ texts and teacher guides, since first grade is a critical year for establishing successful beginning reading skills (Juel, 1988). We became aware of the two intervention programs compared in this study when they first appeared in schools in which we were working as teacher educators and researchers. Initial reviews of the programs showed that they share components such as student texts and teacher guides featuring phonics lessons, but there appeared to be distinct differences in the student texts. One program’s texts featured many phonetically regular words, whereas the other program’s texts were labeled “leveled” and appeared to include more repetition of words and syntactic patterns. Knowing of a decades-long tradition of descriptive studies comparing attributes of classroom reading programs according to their philosophical viewpoints – meaningvs. codeemphasis (Beck & McCaslin, 1978; Chall, 1967/1983; Foorman, Francis, Davidson, Harm, & Griffin, 2004; Meyer, Greer, & Crummey, 1987; Stein, Johnson, & Gutlohn, 1999), we became AN ANALYSIS OF TWO READING INTERVENTION PROGRAMS 4 interested in how commercially available intervention programs used in RtI settings may be connected to these viewpoints as well. Wanting to know more about the nature of the words featured in the programs’ texts, and their relation to the instruction provided in the programs, we decided to inventory and compare characteristics that have been shown in the literature to be important for beginning reading acquisition. This information is valuable to the educators and researchers who choose these intervention programs from among a multitude of options available in today’s marketplace. As the dimensions of variation in these programs are not completely obvious to the untrained eye, we believe reporting variations will lead to more informed choices about what each intervention can provide to at-risk beginning readers. We begin by providing a theoretical framework that organizes the features of texts having empirical or theoretical support in the literature. We briefly examine the prominent viewpoints relating the features of beginning reading texts to both descriptive and intervention studies addressing these texts. We finish by presenting our review of the word-level, text-level, and program-level analyses of texts in these programs. A Theoretical Framework for Comparing Beginning Reading Texts The assumption that a particular type of text can best promote reading for all students is typified in the “reading wars” (Pearson, 2004) between those advocating a code-emphasis approach to reading instruction and those advocating a meaning-emphasis approach (e.g., Bond & Dykstra, 1967; Foorman, Francis, Fletcher, Schatschneider, & Mehta, 1998). Reflecting on reviews of research, Mesmer, Cunningham, and Hiebert (2012) suggested that types of texts currently used for beginning reading instruction reflect mandates of state legislatures and advocacy of special interest groups more than evidence from theory or research. Mesmer et al. AN ANALYSIS OF TWO READING INTERVENTION PROGRAMS 5 argued for a reexamination of the research and design of the texts of reading acquisition and proposed the rudimentary components of a framework to initiate this process. The Mesmer et al. (2012) framework addresses features of text elements related to words in individual texts, words occurring across multiple texts, and program instruction of the words. Related to this work, we propose that at the word-level, multiple features of words can influence instructional goals for beginners (especially those who are at-risk) such as those related to lettersound features and meaning features. Our theoretical framework also considers features present across multiple texts (the text-level), since it is the "diet" of text experiences, such as the repetition of words or the introduction of new words, which has potential to influence selfteaching. Finally, the framework takes into account the program-level feature of lesson-to-text match (LTTM), which refers to the match between the phonics instruction in a program's teacher guides and the words in the texts students are given to practice reading. In this study, the rationale for this framework includes both theoretical and empirical investigations of beginning texts at each level of analysis word, text, and program. Prominent Perspectives on Beginning Reading Texts In 1984, Aukerman categorized 165 approaches to beginning reading instruction as using one of three types of texts: phonics, whole-word, and whole-text. A review similar to Aukerman’s has not been conducted in the past 25 years, but Mesmer (2008) identified two types as dominant in today’s classrooms: decodable (the current term for phonics texts) and leveled (the current term for whole-text texts). Before describing these text types below, we note that phonics/decodable texts are typically aligned with a code-emphasis approach to teaching reading, where the emphasis is on teaching students to use the alphabetic code to identify words. Wholeword and whole-text/leveled texts are generally aligned with a meaning-emphasis approach to AN ANALYSIS OF TWO READING INTERVENTION PROGRAMS 6 teaching reading, which emphasizes reading for meaning (recently referred to as the whole language approach the term used throughout this paper). Our focus is on present-day forms of these two text types: decodable and leveled. In the upcoming descriptions of the philosophical origins of decodable and leveled texts, we first give a brief history of whole-word texts to help in understanding the impact of state mandates on current beginning reading texts. Excerpts from the three prototypical texts appear in Table 1. Whole-Word Texts From approximately 1930 to 1990, when the whole-word approach dominated texts of beginning reading instruction (Hoffman, Sailors, & Patterson, 2002), stories were mainly constructed around high frequency words (e.g., where, yes, can, out), using algorithms to repeat and introduce new words. It was believed that repetition of whole words enabled beginning readers to memorize useful and frequent words so that early texts could be read successfully (Aukerman, 1984). A national commission (Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkinson, 1985) called for an end to such algorithmic control of word repetition in text, and subsequent guidelines for textbook adoption cycles of California (California English/Language Arts Committee, 1987) and Texas (Texas Education Agency, 1990) mandated that beginning reading texts be authentic not controlled. The whole language approach as these mandates came to be known lasted only a single adoption cycle, when it was overturned to mandate decodable text (described next). Interestingly, the backlash against controlling whole-word repetition remained, as up to 70% of the words in beginning reading programs published after the decodable text mandate appeared only a single time (Foorman et al., 2004). The only texts in the current marketplace that retain a trace of an emphasis on whole-word repetition of high frequency words are those sold by trade book publishers (e.g., I Can Read series published by HarperCollins), an excerpt of which AN ANALYSIS OF TWO READING INTERVENTION PROGRAMS 7 appears in Table 1. High frequency words in texts such as Lucky, however, are neither presented sequentially nor repeated according to the algorithms of the earlier period. Decodable Texts Decodable texts represent the latest in a long history of phonics texts emphasizing the alphabetic code. The emphasis in such texts is the use of letter and sound knowledge to decode unknown words (Mesmer, 2008). The labels for these texts have been many: phonics, association of sound and spelling, phonological linguistic, phonic-word, and modified linguistic approach (Bond & Dykstra, 1967). The term “decodable text” was not used until the late 1970s (Google ngram viewer; Michel et al.,