A follow-up study of the ABRACADABRA web-based literacy intervention in Grade 1

This paper reports the follow-up of a randomised control trial study of the ABRACADABRA web-based literacy intervention that contrasted synthetic versus analytic phonics (Comaskey, Savage & Abrami, 2009) in kindergarten children from urban low-SES backgrounds. Participants who received a 'synthetic' phonics+ phoneme awareness training (n = 26) or an 'analytic' phonics+phoneme awareness training literacy intervention (n = 27) were tested on standard measures of literacy 1 year later. Results revealed a significant main effect (p<.01) for the analytic group performing better on passage reading comprehension. Modest advantages for children who received the analytic phonics programme were evident. We obtained an effect size favourably comparable with other studies, after adjusting for intervention duration (ES = .41). It is concluded that analytic phonics programmes may provide modest but significant sustained advantages in literacy for kindergarten children from low-SES backgrounds.