DART Project Update 2021

Hello everyone,

It’s time to fill you in on what we’ve been up to over the last year or so…

Just in case you are new to the DART project, it is organised in to three separate ‘work packages’ each looking at a different aspect of reading skills in children of different ages. Our original aim was to carry out our computerised dynamic assessment (and other tasks) with children once and then again approximately 12 months later to see what progress they had made.

The pandemic had other plans. As you will be aware, there were two separate blocks of time where schools were closed which impacted our three work packages in different ways, so we will update you on each of them separately.

Work package 1 (decoding in Reception)

We had only just begun this work package in March 2020 when the country went into its first national lockdown. Fortunately, we were able to reschedule and data collection for the first time point took place successfully between May and July 2021 whilst children were in Reception. We are hoping to start collecting data for the second time point during the second half of the Spring term 2022 when the children will be in Year 1.

Work package 2 (orthographic learning in Year 3)

The first assessments were completed by March 2020 when the children were in Year 3. After two lockdowns, we were able to conduct follow-up assessments in March and April of this year when the children were in Year 4. All of the data have now been inputted and we are at the analysis stage for this work package.

Work package 3 (reading comprehension in Year 4)

Year 4 children were seen during Summer term 2019 for the first set of assessments. School closures meant that our second time point had to be delayed until the Autumn term of 2020 (when the children had moved into Year 6). We have nearly completed the analyses of the data and we have begun writing up the findings for publication. We hope to be able to share an overview of them with you soon.

What’s next?

• Work package 1 follow up in Spring term 2022.
• A smaller version of WP2 with slightly younger children. One of the findings of our systematic reviews (dedicated post coming shortly!) was that dynamic assessment seems to be better at predicting future reading skills for younger children. We have decided to test this out by asking children in Year 2 to complete the dynamic test of orthographic learning. This way, we will be able to compare results to the original WP2 study with children in Year 3.
• We will write up the findings from each work package in the form of academic papers but we will also summarise them here on our website in the coming months.
• We have been busy reviewing the literature on dynamic assessment and reading. We are hoping these papers will be published soon and if so, we will provide a link to them here on our website.

We hope this update has you now suitably informed!

A special thank you to the schools and children who continue to support the DART project through their enthusiasm and participation despite such a turbulent year.

All the very best wishes,

The DART project team