Efficacy and Replication Trial of the Individualized Adaptive ITSS with 4th and 5th Grade Students in High Poverty Schools

Abstract

Title of Project: Efficacy and Replication Trial of the Individualized Adaptive ITSS with 4th and 5th Grade Students in High Poverty Schools 2. The RFA topic and goal under which the applicant is applying: 84.305A - Reading and Writing – Goal 3 Efficacy and Replication 3. A brief description of the purpose: The aim of this research project is to improve content area reading comprehension of 4th and 5th graders attending high poverty schools by teaching them how to use the structure strategy using the individualized-adaptive ITSS for 30 minutes twice each week and supported by highly trained teachers. The structure strategy has strong theoretical and empirical foundations. The structure strategy delivered via standard ITSS has beneficial impact as evidenced by the recently completed large scale randomized controlled trial in grades 4, 5, 7 and 8 in rural and suburban schools. The evidence-based structure strategy will be delivered via a web-based intelligent tutoring system that is individualized and adaptive to the learner’s performance within lessons. We hypothesize that students attending high poverty schools in grades 4 and 5 will improve in reading comprehension as measured by the Gray Silent Reading standardized test and researcher-designed measures of reading comprehension (e.g., quality of main idea, generation of signaling words) after learning to use the structure strategy with the individualized adaptive ITSS for 60 minutes a week (as a partial substitute for the language arts curriculum) and supported by highly trained teachers.