The purpose of this investigation was to determine the effect of explicit grammar instruction on the reading comprehension skills of late elementary school students with language and/or reading weaknesses. Three late elementary school students participated in a nine-week changing criterion study using Shape Coding as the intervention. Grade-level morphosyntax skills were measured by morphosyntax identification activities. Grade-level text comprehension skills were measured by accurate responses to comprehension passage questions. Results of this study seemed to suggest that using Shape Coding as an intervention showed a therapeutic effect on improving morphosyntax and text comprehension skills. Implications of this investigation showed that Shape Coding may be a viable therapeutic intervention tool to assist students with improving their morphosyntax and comprehension skills and therefore, may improve their academic performance.
Key Words: grammar, reading comprehension, therapeutic intervention, Shape CodingTM
