| Many researchers (e.g., Elbaum, Schumm, & Vaughn, 1997; Vaughn et al., 2003) maintain that administering small-group early (i.e., Grades K-3) reading intervention instruction is an essential practice for preventing long-term reading difficulties. Yet, schools face many challenging decisions regarding how to organize students into this form of instruction, including: the number of students to include in reading intervention groups and whether the groups should be homogeneously or heterogeneously organized (Elbaum, Vaughn, Hughes, & Moody, 1999).;Current research-informed findings on organizing students into small-group reading intervention instruction are scant. Given the importance and limitations of findings on this topic, this study conducted two different investigations: (1) a quantitative and qualitative content analysis, and (2) a quantitative and qualitative semi-structured interview of experts, for increasing knowledge of effective practices for organizing students into early reading interventions.;Content analysis methods were used for coding 26 units of sampling that represented different practices for organizing students into small-group reading interventions across samples of three peer-reviewed educational sources, including: (1) journal articles, (2) textbooks, and (3) assessments programs. The semi-structured interview investigation was used to interview six Texas-state early-reading experts who are: currently employed as early reading professional developers, work in a university educational research center, and have taught in one or more elementary classrooms. The experts provided their opinions regarding the efficacy of the 26 units and additional ways to group students into early reading interventions.;Descriptive statistics were used to calculate the frequency and percentage of the observation of endorsements within and across the sources for the practices represented by the units. Findings indicated that six practices emerged as the most frequently endorsed across the sources. Those six highly-endorsed small-group early reading intervention practices included: (1) identifying students through skills-based reading measures, (2) one teacher teaching 3-to-6 students, (3) homogeneously organized groups, (4) grouping students who are within the same grade level, (5) 30-minute small-group sessions, and (6) administering pretests and posttests. |
