Effects of a classwide reading intervention on reading fluency and comprehension of content area text with students in middle school

Partner reading with paragraph shrinking has been shown to be an effective classwide reading intervention in elementary school, but has yet to be studied with eighth-grade students or with content area reading such as science and social studies. The current study examined the effects of implementing the classwide intervention for 3 wk with 86 students in eighth grade that were randomly assigned to the treatment or a control group. The intervention led to significantly higher oral reading fluency (η2 = .49), and higher scores on a researcher-created maze test for science (η2 = .10) and social studies (η2 = .13). Student variables (i.e., receiving English as a second language services, special education, or a free or reduced-price lunch) did not predict student outcomes and added negligible to small amounts of variance. Therefore, the effects seemed to be positive regardless of student-level factors. Potential implications for practice and research are included.