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Overview1
ClassWide Peer Tutoring (CWPT) is a peer-assisted instructional strategy designed to be integrated with most existing reading curricula. This approach provides students with increased opportunities to practice reading skills by asking questions and receiving immediate feedback from a peer tutor. Pairs of students take turns tutoring each other to reinforce concepts and skills initially taught by the teacher. The teacher creates age-appropriate peer teaching materials for the peer tutors; these materials take into account tutees' language skills and disabilities. Although CWPT can be used in subject areas other than reading, this report focuses on CWPT for beginning reading for elementary school grade levels, which emphasizes reading fluency and comprehension skills. 2
Research
One study of CWPT met the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards. The study included more than 200 students from six urban elementary schools in Kansas. 3
The WWC considers the extent of evidence for CWPT to be small in the general reading achievement domain. No studies that met WWC evidence standards with or without reservations addressed alphabetics, fluency, or comprehension.
Effectiveness
CWPT was found to have potentially positive effects on general reading achievement.
| Alphabetics | Fluency | Comprehension | General reading achievement | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating of effectiveness | na | na | na | Potentially positive |
| Improvement index4 | na | na | na | +14 percentile points |
| na = not applicable | ||||
2 CWPT has developed a version of the program specifically for beginning readers (BR: CWPT). However, this report focuses only on the broader CWPT program, which was the focus of the studies reviewed.
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.
