Total Awareness: Reducing the Severity of Reading Disability.

The goal of this study was to describe and measure the effects of continuous, as-needed intervention in reading for 92 children in Grades 1-2, to determine whether the severity-of reading disability (RD) could be significantly reduced in the catchment schools. The authors hoped that this kind of professional development would help to discriminate between children with true RD and children whose difficulties were caused by more easily remediated phonological awareness problems or limited exposure to reading activities prior to school entry. In this study the second grade teachers formed their own control, because their children were measured in the first year of the study, when second grade was not included, and also in the following year, when their children were full participants in the treatment. A comparison of the reading achievement of second grade children in Years 1 and 2 showed significant differences favoring children in the treated years in decoding, word identification, fluency, and reading comprehension. (Contains 24 references, and 2 tables and a figure of data.)