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Open Court Reading: A Systematic Approach to Teaching Alphabetics, Print Knowledge, and Phonemic Awareness to Beginning Readers. # Reasoning Skill: This question requires the ability to identify and summarize the main program/intervention/tool/strategy

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Intervention Details

Subjects

N/A

Academic Program

General Education

Duration

Full school year. The program is designed to be used for 2.5 hours per day with grades 1-2 and for 2 hours per day with grades 4-6. The intervention was implemented from fall to spring during the 2005-06 school year.

Grades

1, 2, 3

Personnel

General Education Teacher

Intervention Summary

Open Court Reading is a curriculum that includes textbooks, workbooks, decodable books, and anthologies intended to target beginning reading achievement and comprehension. The curriculum consists of three main components: (a) Preparing to Read, (b) Reading and Responding, and (c) Language Arts. For this study, teachers were given a teacher's edition of the curriculum that included scripted direct instruction lessons and diagnostic and assessment packages. The program is designed to be used for 2.5 hours per day with grades 1-2 and for 2 hours per day with grades 4-6. However, the authors report that external consultants observed that some teachers provided only 90 minutes of daily instruction. The intervention was implemented from fall to spring during the 2005-06 school year. In another study, students in the intervention group received reading instruction using Open Court Reading, a systematic approach to teaching alphabetics, print knowledge, and phonemic awareness. For this study, the district used the 1996 version of the curricula, Open Court Collections for Young Scholars. Two hours of daily whole-class reading instruction was followed by 30 minutes of small-group instruction and/or independent work. All study students received a condensed selection of instructional content to "catch-up" students to Open Court Reading content that they had not received in prior years (since they began using the curriculum in either second or third grade).

Statistical Finding Summary

Positive effect on comprehension. Reasoning Skill: This question requires the ability to identify and summarize the main statistical findings of a research study, specifically in the context of evaluating a program or intervention in education. The correct answer demonstrates an understanding of the research study's results, as presented in the excerpt, and the ability to communicate those findings in a clear and concise manner. The incorrect answers (not provided) would demonstrate a lack of understanding of the research study's results or an inability to communicate those findings effectively. This question requires the following reasoning skills for Scientific Evidence Evaluation: 1. Identifying the main statistical findings of a research study 2. Understanding the context of the research study, including the program or intervention being evaluated 3. Communicating complex research findings in a clear and concise manner 4. Avoiding the inclusion of unnecessary or irrelevant information, such as data sample sizes or research study design details.

Source

U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, What Works Clearinghouse. (2014). Open Court Reading©. Retrieved from https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/WWC/intervention/232.

Data Sample by Population

These charts show the characteristics of the student populations studied. When assessing programs, you may want to prioritize interventions that yielded success in a similar demographic environment as your school or district.

The subgroup population data as studied here are not available. That means that while this study may work well for your setting, we cannot say based on the published study and results from our system’s reading of that study what the school/district subgroup characteristics were when evaluated here.