Codebreaker Research Study
We are running an academic trial of this new, remotely delivered reading intervention for Key Stage 3 students. Here are the outline details:
- We are collecting research data on the rate of improvement of reading.
- We also want to track positive changes in the behaviour of the participants.
- You will save the school £3,000 in specialist support for your struggling readers (see below).
- The reading intervention itself and reading assessments will be run online remotely by us, from here in Oxford.
- The participants will be ten struggling readers aged 14 from each school, split into an intervention group and a control group (who will also have access to the intervention after the trial).
You may doubt whether any intervention can work for that group! However, our early tests have been extremely encouraging. You can see our unique background in this field below.
Zero Load on Your Team
We will deliver the new intervention directly to each student over the Internet. So there will be no extra load on you or your colleagues for the intervention work.
We will also run a reading assessment with each learner at the beginning and end of the trial. We can do this with them over the Internet.
The only data we would also like to collect is the number of negative behaviour events tracked in your MIS for each student during the trial. Our expectation is that you will see far fewer disruptions from the group doing the intervention. You may also want to do your own reading assessments, in order to measure the impact you are seeing.
Withdraw At Any Time
As is normal with any research study, both the school and the participants can withdraw from the study at any time.
Your Benefit
As a participating school in the study, ten of your students will get specialist reading intervention support free of charge.
The normal cost for the intervention is £300 plus VAT per student in groups of 10+ students. So the school will save £3,000 by taking part.
The Research Question
The question to be answered is “What are the impacts on both reading age and general behaviour, in response to an All Aboard Codebreaker reading intervention for reading impaired students aged 14 in UK secondary schools.”
Our Background
We have been researching reading impairment from our base here in Oxford since 2008. Over the years we have discovered nine possible neural causes of reading impairment and tested solutions to all nine.
As a result, we have been the most successful provider of reading interventions at the KS2 level globally for several years. You can see the reviews for our Easyread System on Facebook. Those come from teachers and parents around the world. Our expectation is 100% success and most months that is achieved.
We now also offer probably the most effective systematic synthetic phonics programmes for KS1. You can see more details here on our website.
The New Approach
We have taken our KS2 processes and created a new solution that is specifically suited to KS3. It is called Codebreaker and has all our prior research built into it.
We run it as a remote session over the Internet. That has the benefit of feeling like a 1:1 environment for the learner. These students are often very resistant to further remedial group sessions. So the intimate but anonymous feel of an online session is better for them.
We monitor the nine possible issues for each student and make sure they are getting the solution they each need.
We normally see a new attitude in just a few days with our interventions. We then build momentum over the first couple of months and generally see a good outcome by lesson 120.
The core of the phonics is taught through a behavioural phonics approach (i.e. practice-based), rather than the conventional, theoretical phonics approach (i.e. rules-based). This is facilitated by our trainertext system, which we are updating for older learners.
Daily Routine
Students need to do the intervention each day, in order to benefit. However, you can choose when they do it, because the intervention session runs on demand. We then monitor the data coming off each session.
Each intervention will take around 30 minutes and there are 120 sessions.
The intervention also needs to happen in normal lesson time, so that they’re happy to be there. It cannot be in what would otherwise be free time for them. I hope it will make sense to everyone in the team that a fix to their reading difficulties will deliver more benefit in every domain than the time missed during the intervention.
How to Register Interest
We are starting this research study in October and we are just collecting indications of interest now.
If you would potentially like to be involved, please fill in your details below. We will then be back in touch with full details of the trial. You can then choose whether to proceed or not at that moment.
If you have any questions, just reply to this email or call us on 01865 632965.