Evaluating the efficacy of the Headsprout© reading program with children who have spent time in care
Four months of Headsprout® supplemental phonics lifted word recognition and fluency for adopted children who had lived in care.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Storey et al. (2017) ran a four-month randomized trial in two U.K. primary schools. They gave half the class Headsprout® four times a week. The other half kept their usual reading lessons.
All of the children had spent time in foster or residential care before being adopted. The team tracked word recognition age and oral reading fluency every month.
What they found
The Headsprout® group moved up in word recognition age and read more words per minute. The comparison group stayed flat or lost ground.
Teachers said the kids asked to use the program and could work on it with little help.
How this fits with other research
Nally et al. (2021) and Pettingell et al. (2022) show the same program also works for children with autism. Nally had parents run the lessons at home; L added extra supports in class. Both still saw reading gains, so the tool travels across settings and diagnoses.
Gillespie et al. (2023) looks like a contradiction at first. They found only tiny gains when parents used Headsprout at home. The difference is coaching: Gillespie gave parents little help, while Nally trained them with BST plus weekly Zoom check-ins. Coaching turns the switch from "weak" to "positive."
Bailey et al. (2022) tested a different online reading program (ABRACADABRA) with autistic children and saw no benefit. Headsprout’s built-in mastery checks and game pace may be why it keeps winning when other software stalls.
Why it matters
If you work with adopted or foster children, adding Headsprout® for 15 minutes, four times a week, can close reading gaps without pulling kids from core class. Pair the software with brief adult check-ins—teacher, parent, or RBT—to keep completion high. The same setup now has proof across care-experienced and autistic samples, so you can reuse one license for many learners on your caseload.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study investigated whether Headsprout©, an internet‐based phonics program designed on behavioral principles, is an effective supplementary tool to improve literacy skills of children who have spent time in care and are at risk of reading failure. Participants were 8 children (aged 5 to 10) who had spent over 3 years in care and were fully adopted at the time of the study. Participants' literacy skills were assessed prior to intervention using 2 standardized reading attainment tests. Participants were then randomly assigned to either treatment or a waiting list comparison group. There were 2 Headsprout© treatments, but all participants in the treatment group completed 1 HeadsproutStartCopTextStartCopText© lesson 4 times per week, under the supervision of the first author, while participants in the comparison group interacted with the first author 4 times per week engaging in nonliteracy‐based computer activities. Results from 2 standardized reading attainment tests showed an improvement in word recognition age and oral reading fluency for the HeadsproutStartCopTextStartCopText© learners but scores either remained the same or decreased over a 4‐month period for participants in the comparison group. The findings support the wider use of HeadsproutStartCopTextStartCopText© with at‐risk children though more research is clearly warranted at this time.
Behavioral Interventions, 2017 · doi:10.1002/bin.1476