The Strategy Tutor Approach

Support Strategy Instruction for Middle and High School Students

Problems to solve: Low reading achievement is a genuine and consequential problem for many middle school and high school students. Unfortunately, reading comprehension is an extremely difficult skill for many students to master and many content teachers at middle and high school do not have the needed methods, tools, and professional development to easily embed reading comprehension strategy instruction into their content area. Diverse students, including students with learning or reading disabilities, English language learners, and students who fail to engage with reading, all struggle to develop reading comprehension.

Solutions: Provide teachers with a promising approach to improving reading outcomes on the Web that teachers view as feasible to implement, and which is consistent with their curriculum goals and instructional approaches. Further, provide students with important tool for supporting students’ development of web reading strategies and digital literacies.

CAST proposes to provide professional development in strategy instruction to a cadre of approximately 40 teachers and to implement an efficacy study about the effectiveness of the professional development with technology supports and professional development with only traditional supports. At the end of the intervention period all participating teachers will receive the technology supports and professional development to effectively use the technology.

Benefit to students receiving the Strategy Tutor tool during the intervention period

  • provide students with techniques and strategies for understanding content in varied areas
  • provide students with models and guided practice in using these comprehension strategies
  • provide students involved in the targeted intervention with the Web-based Strategy Tutor that
    • supports students in using reading strategies as they learn from information resources on the Web including developing background knowledge and vocabulary, and evaluating Web page quality
    • provides students with help to understand and evaluate content on the web, with the goal of developing and internalizing strategies that can be applied to print and digital content
    • provide an organizing structure and reduce outside distractions (such as manipulation of paper, pencils, and research materials), that can allow students to participate in academic activities with a level of independence that might not have been possible without such a tool, and can provide much needed comprehension strategies for students who may have difficulty with reading and making sense of age-appropriate material.
    • provide a challenging environment for proficient readers to be able to succeed

Benefit to students receiving the Strategy Tutor Approach without technology during the intervention period

  • provide students with techniques and strategies for understanding content in varied areas
  • provide students with models and guided practice in using these comprehension strategies

Benefit to teachers

  • provide all teachers with professional development in research based practices that support reading comprehension across the curriculum
  • provide all teachers with techniques and methods for implementing reading strategy instruction in their content area
  • provide all teachers with materials and resources needed to implement strategy instruction into their instructional practice
  • provide all teachers with supports designed to increase teacher knowledge and application of reading strategy instruction, use of digital materials, and reading on the Internet
  • provide teachers involved in the targeted intervention with the Web-based Strategy Tutor that
    • offers a web-based teacher authoring tool that can be used to create assignments and customize supports for strategies, vocabulary, and background knowledge for specific topics or particular Web pages
    • offers resources related to Reciprocal Teaching and strategy instruction, Universal Design for Learning, and Web evaluation. It provides models, mentorship, and an online lesson data-base to help teachers increase their skills in strategy instruction and digital literacies
    • supports educators who may not have the knowledge or experience necessary to help students learn to effectively and efficiently search for information on the World Wide Web
    • is a structure to introduce the process of online research and reinforces the use of explicit reading strategies as a component of any research, reading and writing activity

All teachers receive

  • Five days of face-to-face professional development (4 days in the summer and 1 day in October), focusing on principles of universal design for learning, theory and practice related to improving reading comprehension, and specifically, reciprocal teaching, and guided practice with CAST’s Strategy Tutor Approach
  • On-site follow-up session with each school so that we can problem solve and discuss Strategy Tutor implementation, problem solve as needed, and collect teacher and student data
  • Technical assistance via email, phone, or video conferencing
  • The Strategy Tutor Tool after the initial professional development

Proposed Impact:

  • Improve reading comprehension, academic achievement, and engagement of diverse learners
  • Increase teacher effectiveness in teaching reading strategies and strategic web reading strategies