Teach Effectively!

The US What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) has released a review of the research on another beginning reading program, the Houghton Mifflin Reading© series. As has become expected, no studies meet the pristine standards to which the WWC holds research.

No studies of Houghton Mifflin Reading© that fall within the scope of the Beginning Reading review meet WWC evidence standards. The lack of studies meeting WWC evidence standards means that, at this time, the WWC is unable to draw any conclusions based on research about the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of Houghton Mifflin Reading©.

Link to the page focusing on Houghton Mifflin’s beginning reading product.

The US What Works Clearinghouse recently released a new publication summarizing research about teaching literacy skills to adolescents.

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) invites you to look at our newest practice guide, Improving Adolescent Literacy: Effective Classroom and Intervention Practices.

This guide provides five specific recommendations to improve literacy among adolescents in the upper elementary, middle, and high school grades.

Designed for teachers and other personnel who have direct contact with students, the guide presents strategies that have the strongest research support and are appropriate for use with adolescents.

Even though I’m a bit wary of the WWC analyses these days, this document appears to have been reasonably thoughtfully done. Here’s a link to download the pdf of the document.

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) published reports on two leading curricula for reading instruction in the US, Reading Mastery and Open Court Reading today. The reports essentially state that the research base for the two programs does not include studies that meet the WWC standards for evidence that can be used to assess effectiveness.

Reading Mastery is a full-year curriculum designed to provide systematic instruction in English language reading. The program teaches phonemic awareness, sound-letter correspondence, word and passage reading, vocabulary development, comprehension, and building oral reading fluency. Read the WWC’s Reading Mastery intervention report at http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/beginning_reading/rdgmastery/.

Open Court Reading© is an elementary basal reading program for grades K-6. The program is designed to follow a logical progression, systematically teaching decoding, comprehension, inquiry and investigation, and writing. The WWC’s Open Court Reading© intervention report is available at http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/beginning_reading/open_court/.