Overview1
Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition® (CIRC) is a comprehensive reading and writing program for students in grades 2 through 8. It includes story-related activities, direct instruction in reading comprehension, and integrated reading and language arts activities. Pairs of students (grouped either by or across ability levels) read to each other, predict how stories will end, summarize stories, write responses, and practice spelling, decoding, and vocabulary. Within cooperative teams of four, students work to understand the main idea of a story and work through the writing process. The CIRC® process includes teacher instruction, team practice, peer assessment, and team/partner recognition. A Spanish version of the program was also designed for grades 2–5. 2
Research
Two studies of CIRC® met the WWC evidence standards with reservations. They included over 700 third-grade students in Ohio and Texas. 3 The WWC considers the extent of evidence for CIRC® to be medium to large for comprehension. No studies that met WWC evidence standards with or without reservations addressed alphabetics, fluency, or general reading achievement.
Effectiveness
The CIRC® program was found to have no discernible effects for comprehension.
| Alphabetics | Fluency | Comprehension | General reading achievement | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating of effectiveness | na | na | No discernible effects | na |
| Improvement index4 | na | na | Average: +4 percentile points Range: +1 to +8 percentile points |
na |
| na = not applicable | ||||
2 The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) reviewed the effects of Bilingual CIRC on the reading achievement of English language learners and the findings are reported in a separate WWC intervention report.
3 The evidence presented in this report is based on available research. Findings and conclusions may change as new research becomes available.
4 These numbers show the average and range of improvement indices for all findings across the study.
