Middle School Reading Comprehension and Content Learning Intervention for Below-Average Readers

Description

This study aimed to determine the efficacy of a content knowledge and reading comprehension treatment implemented by eighth-grade social studies teachers over the course of 1 school year. The authors randomly assigned eighth-grade students with reading difficulties to the intervention treatment condition or the business-as-usual comparison condition. Students in the treatment condition scored statistically higher than students in the comparison condition on measures of knowledge acquisition (effect size [ES] = 0.35), content reading comprehension (ES = 0.59), and vocabulary recall (ES = 0.65). The small ES on standardized reading comprehension (0.10) favoring the treatment condition was not statistically significant.

Citation

Swanson, E., Wanzek, J., Vaughn, S., Fall, A.-M., Roberts, G., Hall, C., & Miller, V. L. (2016). Middle school reading comprehension and content learning intervention for below-average readers. Reading & Writing Quarterly. Advance online publication. doi:10.1080/10573569.2015.1072068