Catch Up® Literacy: Evaluation Report and Executive Summary
Author: Rutt, Simon
Date: 2015-02-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Research Reports,Literacy,Phonemes,Memorization,Suprasegmentals,Intervention,Reading Difficulties,Reading Ability,Reading Comprehension,Reading Skills,Elementary School Students,Middle School Students,Reading Tests,Group Testing,Observation,Interviews,Teacher Surveys,Teacher Aides,Telephone Surveys,Student Characteristics,Cost Effectiveness,Academic Achievement,Program Implementation,Fidelity,Formative Evaluation,Outcomes of Treatment,Program Effectiveness,Program Evaluation,Foreign Countries

Catch Up® Literacy is a structured one-to-one literacy intervention for pupils between the ages of 6 and 14 who are struggling to learn to read. It teaches pupils to blend phonemes (combine letter sounds into words), segment phonemes (separate words into letter sounds), and memorise particular words so they can be understood without needing to use phonics strategies to decode them. The intervention matches books to pupils according to their reading ability, which pupils then read to a teaching assistant (TA), so it is intended to also support the development of their comprehension skills. In this evaluation, the intervention was delivered through two 15-minute sessions per week over 30 weeks at the transition from primary to secondary school, with a break for the summer holidays. Pupils were identified by their Year 6 teachers in their feeder primary schools as being struggling readers who were predicted to achieve below level 4b in reading. Each secondary school employed two part-time TAs to deliver the intervention in the last few weeks of Year 6 and after the pupils transitioned to secondary school. The TAs delivering Catch Up® Literacy were supplied with detailed session plans and received three half-day training sessions led by Catch Up®. Key conclusions include: (1) The pupils that received Catch Up® Literacy made more progress than pupils that did not. However, this difference was not statistically significant so we cannot be confident that it was not due to chance; (2) Catch Up® Literacy did have a statistically significant impact on pupils' attitudes to school, self-assessed ability in reading, and their confidence in and enjoyment of writing; (3) Schools should ensure that Catch Up® Literacy sessions are located in a private and quiet location, and that teaching assistants are given adequate time to prepare before each lesson; (4) Teaching assistants reported a number of benefits for their own professional development. These include increases in confidence, knowledge of literacy support and overall job satisfaction; and (5) Future research could test the impact of Catch Up® Literacy against an &quot;active&quot; control group that receives the same amount of one-to-one tuition as the pupils who receive Catch Up® Literacy. Appended are: (1) Evaluation of Catch Up® Literacy, Student Questionnaire; (2) Evaluation of Catch Up® Literacy, Teaching Assistant Survey; (3) Evaluation of Catch Up® Literacy,Teaching Assistant Survey (Literacy Sessions) and Padlock Rating; and (4) Consent Letter, and Cost Rating. [This report was produced with the research assistance of Claire Easton, Claire O'Beime, and Gill Featherstone.]