Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR): Improving Reading Comprehension of Students with Diverse Abilities

Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) is a set of instructional strategies designed to improve the reading comprehension of students with diverse abilities. CSR uses a mix of whole class instruction and small cooperative learning groups, so that a teacher can work with an entire class at the same time. CSR, and the professional development provided to classroom teachers in conjunction with it, is designed to increase teachers' knowledge of reading comprehension and, consequently, affect teacher practice in the classroom. It uses explicit strategy instruction to teach metacognitive and self-monitoring skills that are expected to lead to improved reading comprehension. In theory, such knowledge should help students recognize whether they understand the information they read and take corrective steps when they do not. The intervention developers theorize that teacher and student use of CSR results in improved student reading comprehension, which in turn increases reading achievement. Because CSR involves changes to teachers' instructional practices, regardless of subject matter, it can be used with a wide variety of curricula,