Helping children with reading difficulties: some things we have learned so far
Genevieve McArthur & Anne Castles
http://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-017-0008-3A third key finding is that only one type of intervention produced a statistically reliable effect. This was phonics training, which focuses on improving a proximal cause of poor word reading (i.e., letter-sound mappings). In contrast, interventions that focused on distal causes of poor reading did not show a statistically reliable effect in poor readers. The outcomes of this systematic review suggest that interventions that focus on phonics—a proximal cause of reading behaviour—are more likely to be effective than interventions that focus on a distal cause. In other words, the “closer” the intervention is to an impaired reading behaviour, the more likely it is to be effective.
And this made Dr Bonnie Macmillan's article spring to mind in an archived Reading Reform Foundation newsletter, see page 13:
http://rrf.org.uk/pdf/nl/46.pdfClassroom Research Findings and the Nutshell Programme
by Dr. Bonnie Macmillan
Interestingly, it was found that out of these ten activities, only two were highly correlated with success in reading and spelling. These two were: ‘phonics’ (which included all phonics activities involving print, letter- sound correspondences, blending, segmenting, detecting sounds in words all with printed form of the word), and ‘letter formation’ (which involved talking about the shapes of letters, writing letters and words in context of learning letter-sound relationships). These were the only activities that mattered in terms of subsequent reading and spelling performance.