Tier 3 Intensified Intervention for Second Grade Students with Severe Mathematics Difficulties

A multiple baseline design was employed to examine the effects of an intensive mathematics intervention, which focused on early numeracy concepts and skills. Thirty-three second grade students participated in the study. Students attended five different schools in one school district and received the intervention in a total of 12 groups from mathematics interventionists. The intervention occurred for about 30 min per session, 5 days a week for 8 weeks with a maintenance phase two weeks later and generalization testing four weeks later. The intervention consisted of explicit instruction, strategies, and mathematics practices. Visual analyses of the data showed improvement for the majority of the groups. Effect size calculations showed no evidence of overlapping data between baseline and intervention for nine out of twelve groups. Maintenance data revealed positive results and five students had a posttest score at or above the 25th percentile on the generalization measure. Implications for practice with limitations and future research are discussed.