SCHOLASTIC LITERACY
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• Provide texts for all learners (either in print or digital formats, though teachers expressed a preference for print). This allows students to engage more with the text and practice reading strategies like previewing and re- reading for comprehension and understanding. • Build in short lessons for remediation on assumed prior knowledge . Optional activities could be embedded into the lesson to ensure foundational knowledge of the topic (e.g., grammar, figurative language, writing mechanics, and text features). One teacher suggested a short lesson that pulls a sentence from a Read-Aloud and diagrams it to teach parts of speech. • Include a variety of formative writing assessments . Teachers recommended creating shortened, condensed writing assessments that are introduced throughout the lesson to formatively assess student writing. Additionally, the assessment should reflect the writing technique being taught rather than in a multiple-choice format. • Align reading and writing . Teachers pointed out that in several cases, the reading genre did not match the writing activity (e.g., an informational text might ask students for a piece of fiction writing). This can be confusing for learners. Discussion The current study was a mixed-methods evaluation designed to provide efficacy evidence for the Scholastic Literacy program, as well as to provide data regarding program implementation and teacher perceptions of the program. Impacts on student reading achievement for Grades 2-5 students were determined by comparing treatment students who used the program to comparison students identified by NWEA’s Similar Schools Report who did not use the program. Results of the main impact analyses showed a small positive impact of Scholastic Literacy on reading achievement. Treatment students who used Scholastic Literacy averaged slightly more than half-point larger gains on the NWEA MAP Reading assessment from BOY to EOY, in relation to comparison students, although this impact did not quite reach statistical significance ( p = .085). It is important to note that, when school-level clustering was not taken into account, the main Scholastic Literacy impact on MAP Reading score gains was statistically significant ( p = .001). Significant positive impacts were evidenced for Grades 3 and 4 students, with Scholastic Literacy students in these grades averaging nearly 1-point larger MAP Reading gains than did comparison students. Subgroup analyses did not show any significant positive program impacts for student subgroups of interest.
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