Improving Reading and Comprehension in Grades 4-8

In 2010, SERP was awarded a five-year grant by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) under the Reading for Understanding Initiative to develop and evaluate programs intended to boost the reading comprehension of students across subject areas in grades 4-8. The overall purpose of this project was (1) to better understand the roles of perspective taking, complex reasoning, and academic language skills in reading comprehension for upper elementary and middle school students, and (2) to refine, develop, and test the efficacy of Word Generation and the Strategic Adolescent Reading Intervention (STARI). Both programs incorporate discussion and debate in order to catalyze the growth of reading comprehension skills, but the latter also addresses basic reading skills. The project also included the development of a PD model for teachers to support reading comprehension and the use of discussion, with an in-depth focus in one content area—science.

The proposal was built directly on the foundational work begun with the Boston Public Schools in 2004. Seven districts in two states participated in the CCDD project.

The Catalyzing Comprehension through Discussion and Debate project had several components:

Word Generation

Word Generation is a Tier 1 program designed for use across content areas in grades 4-8. Though its design preceded the Common Core State Standards, it places heavy emphasis on the skill set targeted by the standards, including academic language, argumentation, analytic reasoning, and expository writing. The CCDD project expanded the original Word Generation program, now called WordGen Weekly, to include WordGen Elementary (cross content area units for 4th and 5th grades), as well as Science Generation (SciGen) and Social Studies Generation (SoGen), in-depth content area units for middle grades.

Strategic Adolescent Reading Intervention

The Strategic Adolescent Reading Intervention (STARI) is a Tier 2 program designed for students in grades 6-8 who are reading at a 3rd or 4th grade reading level. STARI was strategically designed to build students’ deep comprehension skills at the same time that more basic reading skills are addressed. It includes full length novels and poetry, but also includes highly scaffolded reading activities at differentiated levels of difficulty. The CCDD project allowed for the expansion of early drafts of STARI units into a polished reading intervention curriculum with materials at two levels, one for grades 6 and 7 and a second for grades 7 and 8. Level 2 targets the same skills, but has content that is more sophisticated.

Reading to Learn

Reading to Learn is a set of strategies specifically designed for science teachers to help students interpret science texts in grades 4-8. These instructional strategies can be especially helpful when the lesson requires student engagement with text and can be used before, during, or after a reading assignment.

In addition to curricular and PD components, the CCDD project also developed several assessments/research instruments: a perspective-taking measure (the Social Perspective Taking Acts Measure, or SPTAM), an academic language assessment (the Core Academic Language Skills Assessment, or CALS), an assessment of complex reasoning (the Reflective Judgment Test, or RFJ), and an observation tool measuring academic discourse in classrooms (the Low Inference Discourse Observation Tool, or LIDO).

Video: The Big Picture - Overview of CCDD

Catherine Snow shares:

Catalyzing Comprehension through Discussion and Debate is part of the Reading for Understanding effort in grades Pre-K through 12  •  the hypothesis is that engaged classroom discussion will have an impact on reading comprehension  •  components of reading comprehension that are crucial but under-attended-to include perspective taking, academic language, and following lines of argument  •  this work will chart the developmental trajectories of these components that are crucial life skills

Lowry Hemphill discusses:

students get excited about intellectual work if ideas come alive for them  •  in time, students will learn to have debates and discussion in their own heads in order to deeply comprehend texts  •  discussion and debate with classmates will prepare students for the internal debate that is necessary for deep comprehension

Cathy O’Connor adds:

when students reach 4th grade, texts become more complex and students will need to do more than decode in order to comprehend  •  discussion with classmates will show students that others may have had a different understanding of the text  •  debate and discussion with classmates will lead to students embodying this process of understanding texts  •  students will discover that understanding is a process and that, when reading, we often won’t know what the author meant until we engage in discussion and debate

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It is a widely shared goal to have all students prepared for success in college. But when many students from major urban areas confront the college entrance exams that will open or close doors to university studies, they are grossly underprepared for the reading comprehension tasks they face.

Consider this released item from the SAT.

How can we prepare students to successfully answer questions like this? Even if students know the meaning of the words period, authoritative, flexible, and theory, they may still struggle to choose the correct answer. What is typically taught will be of limited value, and even background knowledge will not help (there was refusal to accept the new discovery by many in the public, and researchers did greet the new theory with a great deal of skepticism, if not stubbornness).

Students may have a far better shot at success, however, if they have been in classrooms where claims and arguments are publicly dissected, reasoned through, and debated. Classroom discourse in which a teacher or classmate asks "how do you know…" or "aren't you ignoring…" would support careful and critical attention to precisely what a text says, what the author intends, and what evidence is offered. If the text that is discussed incorporates content-laden academic language (such as flexible theory, authoritative finding), then a student will be better prepared to tackle the SAT question and others of its type.

This site was originally prepared for districts and teachers who partnered with us throughout the project. While we have updated the text, many of the videos included on this site were prepared during the launch of the study. Although the project has come to a close, we are keeping the site and related videos available for those who are interested to learn more about the project.

The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305F100026 to the Strategic Education Research Partnership as part of the Reading for Understanding Research Initiative. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.

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serpinstitute.org •  info@serpinstitute.org •  (202) 223-8555

It is a widely shared goal to have all students prepared for success in college. But when many students from major urban areas confront the college entrance exams that will open or close doors to university studies, they are grossly underprepared for the reading comprehension tasks they face.

Consider this released item from the SAT.

​

How can we prepare students to successfully answer questions like this? Even if students know the meaning of the words period, authoritative, flexible, and theory, they may still struggle to choose the correct answer. What is typically taught will be of limited value, and even background knowledge will not help (there was refusal to accept the new discovery by many in the public, and researchers did greet the new theory with a great deal of skepticism, if not stubbornness).

Students may have a far better shot at success, however, if they have been in classrooms where claims and arguments are publicly dissected, reasoned through, and debated. Classroom discourse in which a teacher or classmate asks "how do you know…" or "aren't you ignoring…" would support careful and critical attention to precisely what a text says, what the author intends, and what evidence is offered. If the text that is discussed incorporates content-laden academic language (such as flexible theory, authoritative finding), then a student will be better prepared to tackle the SAT question and others of its type.

Catalyzing Comprehension through Discussion and Debate (CCDD)