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IES Grant

Title: Writing Intensive Reading Comprehension: Effects of Comprehension Instruction With and Without Integrated Writing Instruction on Fourth and Fifth Grade Students' Reading Comprehension and Writing Performance
Center: NCER Year: 2004
Principal Investigator: Collins, James Awardee: State University of New York (SUNY), Buffalo
Program: Literacy      [Program Details]
Award Period: 3 years Award Amount: $1,500,000
Type: Development and Innovation Award Number: R305G040153
Description:

Purpose: In this study, researchers proposed to develop a curriculum called Writing Intensive Reading Comprehension (WIRC). WIRC was to support students in grades 4 and 5 by integrating reading comprehension instruction with writing instruction in collaborative, theme-based reading/writing workshops. At the time of this project, research on reading and writing suggested assumed that students with high reading comprehension skills could use writing to understand reading, whereas those with low reading comprehension skills could not. However, because there were few validated interventions that focused on helping students develop skills for writing about text, it was unclear whether the lack of targeted writing instruction or reading comprehension were causing the challenges. The WIRC intervention aimed to provide direct instruction on writing about reading to help address the challenges students were facing.

Structured Abstract

THE FOLLOWING CONTENT DESCRIBES THE PROJECT AT THE TIME OF FUNDING

Sample: Participants will be students in grades 4 and 5 in low-performing urban schools in Western New York. It is expected that the population from which the participants of the study will be sampled will reflect characteristics of the district: age range 9 to 12; 71.6 percent will be minority students; 46.39 percent will be poor, with 73.2 percent receiving free or reduced lunch.

Intervention: The WIRC intervention will integrate reading comprehension instruction with writing instruction in collaborative, theme-based reading/writing workshops. The intervention will emphasize work (hence the acronym) which places writing in the service of understanding reading and will include interactive discussions, writing activities, and planning and problem-solving tasks designed to scaffold the writing and reading of struggling comprehenders.

Research Design and Methods: Research methods will consist of quantitative and qualitative study of the effects of Writing Intensive Reading Comprehension (WIRC) instruction for randomly assigned students in fourth and fifth grade classrooms in low-performing urban schools. Quantitative methods will focus on a three-year experimental study of the WIRC intervention using a randomized pretest-posttest control group design. Outcome measures will be reading comprehension and writing performance. Qualitative methods will be used throughout the research to design, implement, and observe the intervention and will consist of videotaped and audiotaped classroom observations, participant observations, teacher logs, fidelity instruments, instructional materials, student writing and comments, teacher and student interviews, and formative assessments.

Products

ERIC Citations: Find available citations in ERIC for this award here.

Select Publications:

Book chapters

Srihari, S., Collins, J., Srihari, R.K., Babu, P., and Srinivasan, H. (2006). Automatic Scoring of Handwritten Essays Using Latent Semantic Analysis. In H. Bunke, and L. Spitz (Eds.), Document Analysis Systems (pp. 71–83). New Zealand: Springer Nelson.

Journal articles

Collins, J.L., Lee, J., Fox, J.D., and Madigan, T.P. (2017). Bringing Together Reading and Writing: An Experimental Study of Writing Intensive Reading Comprehension in Low-Performing Urban Elementary Schools. Reading Research Quarterly, 52(3), 311–332.

Srihari, S., Collins, J., Srihari, R., Srinivasan, H., Shetty, S, and Brutt-Griffler, J. (2008). Automatic Scoring of Short Handwritten Essays in Reading Comprehension Tests. Artificial Intelligence, 172: 2–3.


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