62 Chapter 3 Second, during “Picture arrangement”, the child has to put pictures in the right order to make the story depict right. The child was asked to do this as quickly as possible. Testing was terminated after three consecutive mistakes. The first two items were scored two points at first attempt and one point at second attempt. The other items were given zero, two, three, four, or five points based on accuracy and the time the child needs to order the pictures. The last item was given one point when the order was reversed. All points were counted afterward. The reliability differs per age but is at least .65 (Kort et al., 2005). Third, during “Block design,” the child had to reconstruct patters of two, four, and later nine blocks shown on a picture. The child was asked to do this as quickly as possible. Testing was terminated after two consecutive mistakes. The first three items were scored two points at first attempt and one point at second attempt. The other items were given four, five, six, or seven points based on accuracy and the time the child needs to reconstruct the pattern. All points were counted afterward. The reliability differs per age but is at least .71 (Kort et al., 2005). Fourth, during “Visual puzzles” the child has to make five puzzles of everyday objects. Testing was terminated after four consecutive mistakes. Each right connection between puzzle pieces was given one point. Extra points were given when less time was needed to make the puzzle, with a maximum of ten points. All points were counted afterward. The reliability differs per age but is at least .40 (Kort et al., 2005). Phonics through spelling intervention The aim of the phonics through spelling intervention was to reach a functional level of technical reading (given the age) and spelling (given the class) by means of combining reading and writing into one intervention. The intervention meets the criteria of the standardizedDutchProtocolDyslexiaDiagnosticsandTreatment (Blomert, 2006).Children had a weekly 45-minute session with a clinician. The mean length of the intervention was 27.06 weeks (SD = 4.79). Variation in the length of the intervention occurred due to variation in time needed to acquire the 80%-accuracy levels as described below. During these sessions, the clinician tailored the intervention as much as possible to each child’s needs. Explicit direct instruction, guided exercises, and feedback were given according to each child’s needs. Approximately half of the time was spent on reading activities and the other half of the time was spent on spelling activities. The continuity of quality during assessment and intervention was guaranteed by supervision of certified clinical health psychologists. The intervention included three parts: (1) Grapheme–phoneme correspondence (GPC) Both reading and spelling started with practice of GPC. The GPCs a child found difficult were identified and practiced using mnemonic cards. When the child read or wrote all
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