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Collaborative Strategic Reading During Social Studies in Heterogeneous Fourth-Grade Classrooms

Publisher: Elementary School Journal, 99 (1)
Page Numbers: 3-21

This study investigated the effectiveness of a cooperative learning approach designed to foster strategic reading in 3 heterogeneous, culturally and linguistically diverse, general education classrooms in 1 school. Fourth graders in an 11-day experimental condition were taught by the researchers to apply reading comprehension strategies while reading social studies text in small student-led groups. Control condition students in 2 classes did not learn comprehension strategies but received researcher-led instruction in the same content. Outcome measures indicated that students in the experimental condition made greater gains in reading comprehension, and equal gains in content knowledge.