Reading researcher George Georgiou at the University of Alberta conducted what he describes as Canada's largest literacy intervention, with most participating children tripling their reading progress rate in just five months. According to preliminary results, approximately one in two children no longer needed further support afterward.
The training was delivered to 1,000 struggling second-grade readers across five provinces, four times weekly for 30 minutes each session. For about 80 percent of participants, the improvement represented an additional learning gain of one and a half years beyond normal development, according to Dr. George Georgiou, Professor at the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta.
Phonics-focused small-group instruction over 16 weeks
Over 16 weeks, children trained in small groups with emphasis on phonological awareness, phonics, irregular word reading, and decodable texts. In Alberta, 56 schools from seven school districts participated, along with a Suzuki charter school and a school of the Alexander First Nation. Georgiou has been tracking student reading performance in Alberta since 2008, when he introduced an initial intervention program using evidence-based methods; in 2022, his approach helped a group of elementary students recover to pre-pandemic levels after pandemic-related declines.
Child outcomes varied
About 5 to 10 percent of children have learning difficulties such as dyslexia, while others may have experienced poor instruction in early years or lacked supportive home environments with books and reading parents. Around 10 percent of children in his cohort showed no improvement, and 5 percent saw declining reading performance, which Georgiou attributes largely to poor attendance.
Evidence from earlier cohorts
An earlier cohort from the same research lab with 362 students from four school districts in Alberta, running from October 2021 to February 2022, achieved similar results: 82 percent improved their reading ability by an average of 1.5 years, and 72 percent no longer needed intervention afterward. Eight years after implementing such a support program in the Fort Vermilion School Division in Alberta, 86 percent of ninth-graders now achieve grade-level reading competence, compared to 43 percent beforehand, according to the Globe and Mail.