Intensive Intervention in Reading Fluency for At-Risk Beginning Spanish Readers

Abstract

A study was conducted using a single case, multiple baseline (across subjects) design to study an intensive reading intervention among low-achieving at-risk students in first and second grade Spanish/English bilingual classrooms. The intervention, involving three research-supported techniques, was conducted for 45 minutes per day, three days per week, over 12 weeks, with 74 students from four classrooms (analyses included 53 students with complete data). Dependent measures were oral reading fluency scores and comprehension scores from post-reading questions, collected every two weeks from equivalent probes. It was concluded that implementing intensive reading fluency interventions in bilingual classrooms is feasible and valuable if conducted with fidelity, and if students are highly engaged.