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Overview1
Program Description2
Read Well® is a reading curriculum for kindergarten and first-grade students whose goal is to increase students’ literacy abilities. The program provides instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency. Students are given opportunities to discuss the vocabulary concepts that are presented in each story. The program is based on the tenets of scaffolded instruction, in which teachers begin by presenting models and gradually decreasing their support by providing guided practice before students are asked to complete the skill or strategy independently. For example, the student and teacher read new text aloud with the teacher reading the difficult or irregular words. As student skills (and motivation) increase, the amount of teacher-read text decreases and the student is given greater independence. The program combines daily whole class activities with small group lessons.
Research3
One study of Read Well® that falls within the scope of the English Language Learners review protocol meets the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards. This study, which included 34 first-grade English language learner students from one school in rural Colorado, examined program impacts on students’ reading and English language development.4
Based on this one study, the WWC considers the extent of evidence for Read Well® on English language learners to be small for both reading achievement and English language development. No studies that meet WWC evidence standards with or without reservations examined the effectiveness of Read Well® on English language learners in mathematics achievement.
Effectiveness
Read Well® was found to have no discernible effects on reading achievement and potentially positive effects on English language development for elementary school English language learners.
| Reading achievement | English language development | Mathematics achievement | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rating of effectiveness | No discernible effects | Potentially positive effects | na |
| Improvement index5 | Average: –1 percentile points Range: –2 to –1 percentile points |
Average: +21 percentile points | na |
| na = not applicable | |||
2 The descriptive information for this program was obtained from a publicly available source: the program’s website (http://store.cambiumlearning.com/resource.aspx?page=ProgramOverview&site=sw&parentId=019005451, downloaded May 2009). The WWC requests developers to review the program description sections for accuracy from their perspective. Further verification of the accuracy of the descriptive information for this program is beyond the scope of this review. The literature search reflects documents publicly available by February 2009.
3The studies in this report were reviewed using WWC Evidence Standards, Version 2.0 (see the WWC Procedures and Standards Handbook, Chapter III), as described in protocol Version 2.0.
4 The evidence presented in this report is based on available research. Findings and conclusions may change as new research becomes available.
5 These numbers show the average and range of student-level improvement indices for all findings across the study.