The Promise of a Literacy Reform Effort in the Upper Elementary Grades

We compared year-long gains in fluency and comprehension in grades 3-5 in 3 treatment and 4 comparison schools. Treatment schools implemented a comprehensive school reform (CSR) program called Bookworms. The program employed challenging text and emphasized high text volume, aggressive vocabulary and knowledge building, and contextualized strategy instruction. Comparison schools used a traditional guided reading approach that matched children to instructional-level texts. We established feasibility of the CSR treatment through document review. Achievement levels were initially comparable in fluency and comprehension. Repeated-measures MANOVAs revealed that for reading fluency, the treatment group grew significantly more than the control group in grades 3 and 5 but not in grade 4. For comprehension, the treatment group exhibited significantly more growth at all 3 grades. Implications of the study are discussed.