Making Challenging Social Studies Texts Accessible: An Intervention

One major difference between more and less successful readers involves their access to complex texts and the conceptual knowledge and extensive vocabulary presented in them. The current research looks at four variations of scaffolded reading instruction on the reading achievement of struggling third-grade readers using informational texts. Social studies texts were selected using Lexile levels to determine the selections’ difficulty; Guided Reading levels were also used when available. Twenty-four students from three different classrooms at a Title One school in the Midwest participated in one of four groups (Wide Reading with instructional level texts, Wide Reading with grade level texts, Repeated Reading with instructional level texts, and Repeated Reading with grade level texts). An analysis of the pretest indicated that the initial ability levels of the four groups were equivalent. This research demonstrated overall gains for the third-grade readers in terms of reading ability while expanding their access to vocabulary and conceptual knowledge, two of the factors underlying the achievement gap.