Abstract:

High-risk secondary students with low reading ability were given a seven week phonics intervention to see if reintroducing phonics information would improve their reading skills. Although phonics skills are generally associated with beginning readers, this intervention was with students in a high school in the United States, ages 13-15 years old. The intervention took about 15 to 20 minutes of class time and was imbedded within a regular class students were already taking. Pre-testing identified the decoding skills that students were unfamiliar with and the intervention addressed these areas. Students were post-tested after the seven weeks and again one year later. All students benefited significantly from the phonics intervention. This research encourages the use of structured phonics with struggling high school age students.

The research will be reviewd and some of the instructional strategies used with students will be shared.