Let’s Go Back in the Time Machine: An Investigation into the Impact of Strategy-Based Reading Interventions on Year 4 Pupils’ Comprehension Skills

Abstract

This study explored the impact of increased reading interventions (with a focus on strategy-based teaching) on Year 4 pupils’ reading comprehension skills. An experimental group of 9 pupils participated in daily reading interventions from the beginning of January to the end of March to improve their competence in using the following comprehension strategies; inference, prediction, summarisation, and activating prior knowledge (from inside and outside of the text). The findings demonstrated that all pupils made progress in their reading comprehension ages and qualitative responses to reading comprehension questions, compared to 33% of pupils in the control group making progress. Over the course of the interventions, the pupils also demonstrated an increase in explicit use of strategies in their responses to comprehension questions. Although some pupils made more progress than others, the findings yielded from this study support the importance of helping struggling readers through increased reading interventions and explicit tuition.