Repeated Reading. What Works Clearinghouse Intervention Report
Author: What Works Clearinghouse (ED)
Date: 2014-05-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Oral Reading,Reading Fluency,Reading Instruction,Repetition,Instructional Effectiveness,Intervention,Learning Disabilities,Educational Research,Reading Comprehension,Reading Achievement,Alphabets,Middle School Students,High School Students,Grade 5,Grade 6,Grade 7,Grade 9,Grade 10,Grade 11,Grade 12

&quot;Repeated reading&quot; is an academic practice that aims to increase oral reading fluency. &quot;Repeated reading&quot; can be used with students who have developed initial word reading skills but demonstrate inadequate reading fluency for their grade level. During &quot;repeated reading,&quot; a student sits in a quiet location with a teacher and reads a passage aloud at least three times. Typically, the teacher selects a passage of about 50 to 200 words in length. If the student misreads a word or hesitates for longer than 5 seconds, the teacher reads the word aloud, and the student repeats the word correctly. If the student requests help with a word, the teacher reads the word aloud or provides the definition. The student rereads the passage until he or she achieves a satisfactory fluency level. The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) identified two group design studies of &quot;repeated reading&quot; within the scope of the Students with Learning Disabilities topic area that meet WWC group design standards. Both studies meet WWC group design standards without reservations. Together, these studies included 78 students with learning disabilities from grades 5-12 in two different locations. The WWC considers the extent of evidence for &quot;repeated reading&quot; on students with learning disabilities to be small for four outcome domains--reading comprehension, alphabetics, reading fluency, and general reading achievement. There were no studies that meet standards in the five other domains covered by the WWC reading topic area, so this intervention report does not summarize the effectiveness of &quot;repeated reading&quot; for those domains. Appended are: (1) Research details for Ellis &amp; Graves, 1990; (2) Research details for Wexler et al., 2010; (3) Group design outcome measures for each domain; (4) Group design findings included in the rating for the reading comprehension domain; (5) Group design findings included in the rating for the alphabetics domain; (6) Group design findings included in the rating for the reading fluency domain; (7) Group design findings included in the rating for the general reading achievement domain; (8) Group design follow-up test findings in the reading comprehension domain; (9) Group design posttest comparison of &quot;repeated reading&quot; and paraphrasing versus comparison in the reading comprehension domain; (10) Group design follow-up test comparison of &quot;repeated reading&quot; and paraphrasing versus comparison in the reading comprehension domain; and (11) Single-case design study that meets WWC pilot standards. A description of the WWC Rating Criteria and a Glossary of Terms are also included. [The two studies examined in this intervention report are: (1) Ellis, E. S., &amp; Graves, A. W. (1990). &quot;Teaching rural students with learning disabilities: A paraphrasing strategy to increase comprehension of main ideas.&quot; &quot;Rural Special Education Quarterly,&quot; 10(2), 2-10; and (2) Wexler, J., Vaughn, S., Roberts, G., &amp; Denton, C. (2010). &quot;The efficacy of repeated reading and wide reading practice for high school students with severe reading disabilities.&quot; &quot;Learning Disabilities Research &amp; Practice,&quot; 25(1), 2-10.]