A Longitudinal Randomized Trial of a Sustained Content Literacy Intervention From First to Second Grade: Transfer Effects on Students' Reading Comprehension

We developed a sustained content literacy intervention that emphasized building domain and topic knowledge from Grade 1 to Grade 2 and evaluated transfer effects on students' reading comprehension outcomes. The Model of Reading Engagement (MORE) intervention emphasizes thematic lessons that provide an intellectual framework for helping students connect new learning to a general schema (i.e., how scientists study past events). A total of 30 elementary schools (N = 2,952 students; N = 144 teachers) were randomly assigned to a treatment or control group. Over 12 months, the treatment group students participated in (a) spring Grade 1 thematic content literacy lessons in science and social studies followed by wide reading of thematically related informational texts during summer, and (b) fall to spring Grade 2 thematic content literacy lessons in science. After implementation of Grade 1 thematic content literacy lessons and summer support for reading, treatment group students experienced smaller summer losses on a domain-general measure of reading than control group students. Following the sustained implementation of thematic content literacy lessons in science through Grade 2, treatment group students also outperformed their control group peers on a science content reading comprehension outcome (ES = .18). Furthermore, we found transfer effects on science content reading comprehension that varied by passage-item type (near-, mid-, and far-transfer passages determined by the inclusion and number of directly taught words in passages). A sustained content literacy intervention that aligns content and instruction across grades can help students transfer knowledge to novel reading comprehension tasks. Educational Impact and Implications Statement This study highlights the benefit of sustaining learning of related topics and aligning science content across grades so that children can read with greater comprehension. Early elementary grade students' acquisition of domain and topic knowledge is critical to reading and understanding complex content-rich informational texts. Sustained and thematic content literacy instruction can help elementary grade students transfer their knowledge to reading texts about related topics in science and social studies. Therefore, sustained content literacy intervention efforts that gradually build thematic connections across grades and across school and home contexts may help young children connect new learning to a general schema and transfer their knowledge to related topics. Compared with students in control group classrooms, students who participated in a sustained content literacy intervention from first to second grade made larger improvements on both general reading comprehension and science content reading comprehension outcomes.