A group of 37 8-year-old children who had scored below the 20th percentile on a national reading test were offered intensive reading instruction in groups of four during Grade 3 in two periods (10 and 5 weeks). The intervention was delivered by six teachers who received training in a comprehensive reading intervention programme called Epi-Meta-Mastery-Approach, designed on the basis of the theory of metalinguistic development (Gombert, 1992). A control group of 36 children received increased instructional intensity during the same periods. The intervention group showed gains in comparison with the control group on measures of word and non-word reading and spelling.