What Works for Slow Readers?

Dougal Hutchison, Greg Brooks, Nicola Flanagan, Zenta Henkhuzens

01 March 1999

As many children as possible should learn to read satisfactorily first time, but what of those who don't? How are they to be helped? This book is about intervention schemes that have been devised to address this need, and is intended to inform schools' choices among such schemes.

The questions this book addresses are:

• Which approaches have been used in Britain in an attempt to boost the reading attainment of lower-achieving but non-dyslexic pupils in Years 1-4?
• Which of those approaches have been quantitatively evaluated?
• What are those schemes like, and how effective are they?

This book analyses 20 studies which provide evidence on the effectiveness of about 30 approaches, ranging from parental involvement to computer-assisted methods, and taking in Catch Up, DISTAR, Family Literacy, Paired Reading, Reading Recovery and THRASS.