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What We Did: Reading In Motion commissioned a study to determine the impact of Reading In Motion's arts-based Teacher Institute training program on students' reading comprehension skills. During the summer before the 2000-01 school year, Reading In Motion implemented its Teacher Institute for teachers from 12 elementary schools in Chicago and Evanston. The Teacher Institute is an intensive workshop in which teachers learn to implement its Reading In Motion curriculum. Aimed at 3rd-8th grade students, this portion of the Reading In Motion curriculum is designed to improve students' reading comprehension skills through a drama-based curriculum. Following the Institute, teachers were asked to implement the curriculum in their classrooms during fall of the 2000-01 school year. Seven teachers trained at the Institute participated in this final phase of the evaluation. Eight classrooms from Evanston and Chicago were included in the experimental group, while 10 classrooms from Evanston and Chicago were included in the control group. All classrooms involved in the experimental and control groups included 4th or 5th grade students. The experimental group students were tested immediately prior to their teacher implementing the Reading In Motion program, as well as 13 weeks later. This allowed teachers to implement a significant portion of the curriculum. Students in both control and experimental classrooms were pre- and post- tested on their reading comprehension skills using the reading comprehension section of the Gates-MacGinitie test of reading. The test results were reported by grade level and month in the school year. For example, a student with a 5.7 score is reading at the fifth grade level in the seventh month of the school year.What We Found:
Students of teachers who were trained in the Reading In Motion curriculum improved their reading skills by 67% more (10 months versus six months) than students of teachers who were not trained. These results provide strong evidence that teachers trained in Reading In Motion's Teacher Institutes improved their students' reading scores significantly more than teachers who used other methods. |
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