Relative Efficacy of Parent and Teacher Involvement in Targeted Reading Intervention

(TRI) for Children with Reading Difficulties

Agnes B. Gebone

submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for Reading 200

MSU-Iligan Institute of Technology

Iligan City
2016
Abstract:

The study lies on the principle that reading difficulties do not come from one source for
all students and that, individual’s reading ability is flexible and depends on a number of factors
related to a specific reading task. This theory is consistent with Lipson and Wixson’s (1986)
interactive model of reading disability which states that reading ability (or disability) is
dependent on interactions between multiple factors, including the text, the reader, and the context
(Frankel and Pearson 2014). The study focuses on struggling readers in Grade 1 and uses
Targeted Reading Intervention (TRI) program that provides individualized instruction to the
learners with reading difficulties and encourages teachers to use a variety of strategies depending
on the learner. It consists of 15-minute one-on-one instructional sessions a day that is conducted
in school, followed by a reading intervention of parents at home. Learners were pretested by
standardized tests and were assigned to 1 of 3 conditions: (a) with teacher involvement but with
no parental intervention at home (working parents), (b) with teacher involvement, no parental
intervention at home but with hired tutor, (c) with teacher involvement and parental intervention
at home. This was conducted for 6 weeks, after which, the pupils were post tested on
standardized measures. Significant effects of the program were attained at posttest and were
largest for children in condition with teacher and parental intervention. With this, it would be
easier to provide appropriate intervention to struggling readers.