What matters most here
| Rank | Practice | Grade |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Knowledge-building units: weeks on one topic, read, discussed, and written about (principle 10) | Evidence grade: Proven in classrooms Proven; lottery study effects showed up in grades 3–6 (Grissmer et al.(opens in a new tab)) |
| 2 | Protected science and social studies time | Correlation only: more social studies time linked to better reading (Fordham(opens in a new tab)) |
| 3 | Screening and small-group phonics for slow decoders (principles 9, 12) | Evidence grade: Proven in classrooms Proven in the early grades; less settled for older readers |
| 4 | Quizzing on what was read (principle 6) | Evidence grade: Proven in classrooms Proven across school levels (Yang et al.(opens in a new tab)) |
A lesson in this room
Warm-up questions on last week's reading about the lungs. Teacher reads the next passage aloud, explaining new terms. Students reread with guiding questions; every student writes an answer. Students write three sentences on what they learned.
Leader look-fors
- Is this week's reading connected to last week's topic?
- Are students writing about the content, not just the skill?
- Are science and social studies taught at their scheduled times?
Stop doing
Weekly "skill of the week" lessons on random passages. Cutting science and social studies to make room for more of them.
Where the evidence runs out
Which knowledge-building curricula work best; whether gains show up on general state reading tests as clearly as on topic-based reading (WWC on MORE(opens in a new tab)).
Principles
Sources
- Grissmer et al. 2023 (opens in a new tab)
educationnext.org
- Tyner & Kabourek 2020 (opens in a new tab)
fordhaminstitute.org
- Yang et al. 2021, classroom quizzing (opens in a new tab)
scholars.hkbu.edu.hk
- WWC review of MORE (opens in a new tab)
ies.ed.gov