Harvard Graduate School of Education will work with the Strategic Education Research Partnership and other partners to complete a program of work designed to a) investigate the predictors of reading comprehension
in 4th - 8th grade students,
in particular the role of skills at perspective - taking, complex reasoning, and academic language
in predicting deep comprehension outcomes, b) track developmental trajectories across the middle grades
in perspective - taking, complex reasoning, academic language skill, and deep comprehension, c) develop and evaluate curricular and pedagogical approaches designed to promote deep comprehension
in the content areas
in 4th - 8th grades, and d) develop and evaluate an intervention program designed for 6th - 8th grade students reading at 3rd - 4th grade level.The HGSE team will take responsibility,
in collaboration with colleagues at other institutions, for the following components of the proposed work: Instrument development: Pilot data collection using interviews and candidate assessment
items, collaboration with DiscoTest colleagues to develop coding of the pilot data so as to produce well - justified learning
sequences for perspective - taking, complex reasoning, academic language skill, and deep comprehension.Curricular development: HGSE investigators Fischer, Selman, Snow, and Uccelli will contribute to the development of a discussion - based curriculum for 4th - 5th graders, and to the expansion of an existing discussion - based curriculum for 6th - 8th graders, with a
particular focus on science content (Fischer), social studies content (Selman), and academic language skills (Snow & Uccelli).