Occupational Therapy-based Literacy Intervention and Classroom Based Literacy Intervention
Condition: Literacy
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of a literacy focused occupational
      therapy intervention program versus standard classroom-based reading intervention on reading
      engagement and reading achievement in elementary school-aged children with emotional
      disturbances.
    

Detailed description: 
      The elementary school will assist with recruitment by sending recruitment packets home to
      parents/legal guardian of children to consent to participation in the study. Interested
      families will return the signed consent form to the researchers in a sealed envelope. These
      signed consent forms will be collected from the school by the researchers. For children where
      a consent was provided by a parent or legal guardian, an assent form will be completed by the
      child for the child to also consent to participating the study, a requirement to ensure that
      the child has a choice in partaking in the study.

      Once all consents have been received, all consenting student participants will be placed in
      either a control group or intervention group based on the students' classroom teacher. Both
      the control group and intervention group will be assessed using the Inventory of Reading
      Occupations(IRO) to determine their access to reading materials and their perceived
      proficiency with the reading tasks. Both the control group and intervention group's reading
      level will be obtained from the classroom teacher using the results of the Independent
      Reading Level Assessment® Framework (IRLA) from the beginning of the school year.

      The intervention group will be provided with a 12-question survey to determine reading
      interest to guide the 9-week literacy intervention plan and ensure that the literacy
      intervention plan is in line with the IRLA reading Program. The control group will receive
      literacy instruction as proposed by the IRLA reading program and will not receive a specific
      occupation-based literacy intervention plan. Both the control and intervention group will
      have the principal investigator and student researchers available to provide one-on-one
      support during literacy instruction, with the intervention group receiving a specific
      literacy intervention plan while the control group continues with the literacy instructional
      material provided within the IRLA assessment framework. At the end of 9-weeks, the control
      group and intervention group will be re-administered the Inventory of Reading
      Occupations(IRO) and an updated reading achievement will be obtained from teacher from the
      student's scores on the Independent Reading Level Assessment® Framework (IRLA) at the end of
      the 9-week intervention period. The control group and intervention group's IRO and IRLA
      scores will be analyzed to find out the differences between the groups in reading interest,
      perceived reading proficiency and reading achievement. The researchers will be available by
      phone or email throughout the entirety of the study should questions arise about the
      intervention.
    

Intervention name(s): Occupational Therapy Based Literacy Intervention
Intervention type(s): Other
Intervention description(s): Use of an occupational therapy-based literacy intervention that utilizes student interest to guide a prescriptive literacy intervention. Addressing reading as an occupation and making the necessary modifications to the literacy task to allows for increased engagement in the task. Increased engagement in literacy tasks, allows for opportunities to work on literacy deficit areas to address proficiency with reading ability.
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Single Group Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary purpose: Treatment