Abracadabra (ABRA): Online Reading Support

Funder

Education Endowment Foundation

Total value of project

£643,467

Project team

Dr Janet Vousden (PI), Professor Clare Wood, Dr Helen Johnson

Collaborators

London School of Economics, York Trials Unit

Duration of project

01/01/2013 - 01/01/2015

Project overview

Abracadabra (ABRA) is an online toolkit composed of phonics, fluency and comprehension activities based around a series of age-appropriate texts. The trial assessed a 20 week programme of lesson plans using the ABRA activities (referred to here as the ICT programme). The trial also assessed the impact of an offline, paper version of the same programme (referred to here at the non-ICT programme).

The study was funded by the Education Endowment Foundation and Nominet Trust as part of a funding round focusing on the use of digital technology to improve outcomes for disadvantaged children.

Project objectives

The EEF tested the ABRA online activities in a programme of 20 weeks of lesson plans, a small group literacy programme that is administered by specially trained teaching assistants and takes a balanced approach to teaching literacy involving both phonics and reading comprehension. They funded the project because it takes an evidence-based approach to literacy, and because the ABRA software is free, meaning that ongoing costs to schools would be low after the initial training for Teaching Assistants.

• Impact statement

  Our evaluation tested the online, ICT programme, alongside the paper-based, Non-ICT alternative using the same activities and texts. Positive effects were found for both, equivalent to two to three months of additional progress, with a larger impact for students eligible for free school meals. The findings are consistent with the evidence from the Teaching and Learning Toolkit, which indicates that technology is most effective when used to facilitate new approaches to teaching and learning, rather than as an end in itself, and with our Key Stage 1 Literacy Guidance, which recommends a balanced approach to teaching reading.

  An impact on attainment was still observable a year after the intervention, as measured by nationally prescribed teacher assessments at the end of Key Stage 1.

  The EEF has funded a further trial of ABRA to test its impact when delivered at scale. Results from this trial will be available Summer 2021. Many schools already purchase commercial reading programmes and may wish to consider the ABRA training and free software as an alternative with promising evidence.

• Outputs

  Teaching Assistants, Computers and Classroom Management. Johnson, H., McNally, S., Rolfe, H., Ruiz-Valenzuela, J., Savage, R., Vousden, J. & Wood, C., Jun 2019, In: Labour Economics. 58, p. 21-36.

  https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/projects-and-evaluation/projects/abracadabra-abra-pilot/

  https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/projects-and-evaluation/projects/abracadabra-abra/