Synthetic phonics and decodable instructional reading texts: How far do these support poor readers?

This paper presents data from a quasi-experimental trial with paired randomisation that emerged during the development of a reading scheme for children in England. This trial was conducted with a group of 12 children, aged 5-6, and considered to be falling behind their peers in reading ability and a matched control group. There were two intervention conditions (A: using mixed teaching methods and a high percentage of non-phonically decodable vocabulary; P: using mixed teaching methods and low percentage of non-decodable vocabulary); allocation to these was randomised. Children were assessed at pre- and post-test on standardised measures of receptive vocabulary, phoneme awareness, word reading, and comprehension. Two class teachers in the same school each selected 6 children, who they considered to be poor readers, to participate (n = 12). A control group (using synthetic phonics only and phonically decodable vocabulary) was selected from the same 2 classes based on pre-test scores for word reading (n = 16). Results from the study show positive benefits for poor readers from using both additional teaching methods (such as analytic phonics, sight word vocabulary, and oral vocabulary extension) in addition to synthetic phonics, and also non-decodable vocabulary in instructional reading text.