CSI – Comprehension Strategies Instruction

RESEARCH

The case for explicit comprehension strategy instruction for middle school students

Download the CSI - Comprehension Strategies Instruction research report:

CSI RESEARCH REPORT (517 KB)

Download the CSI - Comprehension Strategies Instruction Australasian research report, updated 2012: 

Australasian research report (2621 KB)

What the research says

In recent years, teaching and learning approaches and the materials used in classrooms have increasingly been benchmarked against research evidence. 

Research reports since 2000 have confirmed both the need for comprehension instruction in middle school and at high school and its urgency. The most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, 2002) shows that many eighth-grade and twelfth-grade students do not have the capacity to perform the higher order cognitive work required for deep learning of content through reading. (Kamil, 2003, p. 12)

Michael Kamil of Stanford University urges educators to respond immediately:  "This is an extremely complex problem, and the longer we let these kids go the more serious the problem becomes.... The problem exists because [after 3rd grade] we stop providing reading instruction, and the instruction we do provide is not what they need."  (Kamil, M., as cited in Manzo, 2005, p. 38)

There is clear scientific and other evidence for comprehension strategies instruction. "The bottom line is that readers who are given cognitive strategy instruction make significant gains on comprehension compared with students who are trained with conventional instruction procedures." (Trabasso and Bouchard, 2002, p. 177, citing Pressley, Johnson, Symons, McGoldrick, and Kurita, 1989; Rosenshine and Meister, 1994; and Rosenshine, Meister, and Chapman, 1996)

CSI - Comprehension Strategies Instruction

CSI - Comprehension Strategies Instruction is a classroom literacy program that is based on research evidence and is designed to impact on the literacy achievement of students and to provide strong support for teachers of students ages 8--13, particularly in the areas of comprehension strategies instruction, vocabulary, and fluency.

CSI - Comprehension Strategies Instruction is founded on two major research strands:

1. The strand that evidences the need for comprehension instruction in the middle years, particularly instruction that includes content area literacy 
2. The strand that focuses on effective instruction, including research from New Zealand that suggests ways to give all students, whether mainstream students, struggling readers, or English Language Learners, access to similar learning opportunities and outcomes