Bilingual Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (BCIRC)

Product or Programme · All products and programmes
Evidence · 7 claims (5 for, 1 mixed, 1 against) · 3 studies (2 causal, 1 qualitative), q2 · 2 of 3 report an effect size · 7 claims rest on one study

Description

BCIRC is a bilingual adaptation of the Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition program that organizes Spanish- and English-language reading, writing, vocabulary, and comprehension instruction in cooperative student teams for Spanish-speaking learners.

Components

• BCIRC before-, during-, and after-reading activity structure: BCIRC organizes instruction as a recurring cycle of fifteen activities occurring before, during, and after reading. As the report describes, "Fifteen activities occur before, during, and after reading, including using BCIRC materials to develop vocabulary, making predictions of a story's content based on its title, and reading with a partner followed by silent reading". Teachers model reading strategies such as making and confirming a prediction before, during, and after reading, and cooperative groups then apply the demonstrated strategy while attempting to comprehend stories from their classroom text. The pattern embeds vocabulary, prediction, partner reading, and writing within cooperativ (Bilingual Cooperative Integrated Reading et al. (2007))

Claims

• A larger percentage of BCIRC students met the bilingual education exit criterion in language (39% versus 21%), not statistically significant [+W]
• A larger percentage of BCIRC students met the bilingual education exit criterion in reading (32% versus 10%) [+W]
• BCIRC has potentially positive effects on English language development (effect size 0.29, not statistically significant) [+W]
• BCIRC has potentially positive effects on reading achievement for Spanish-speaking English language learners (effect size 0.61, not statistically significant after clustering correction) [+W]
• Two years of BCIRC exposure is associated with larger reading gains than one year (effect size 0.87 significant versus 0.33 non-significant) [+W]
• Contrary to program guidelines, English acquisition was given priority over Spanish acquisition in practice [-W]
• In a five-year quasi-experimental study, the intervention program showed a statistically significant positive effect on fifth-grade reading performance assessment but not on the CTBS Reading subtest [~W]

Related Products and Programmes

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Key Sources

• Bilingual Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition. (2007). WWC Intervention Report. U.S. Department of Education, What Works Clearinghouse. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED405428

Page metadata

Field	Value
type	product
id	bilingual-cooperative-integrated-reading-and-composition-bcirc
title	Bilingual Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (BCIRC)
description	BCIRC is a bilingual adaptation of the Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition program that organizes Spanish- and English-language reading, writing, vocabulary, and comprehension instruction in cooperative student teams for Spanish-speaking learners.
status	review
moved_from	design/bcirc-fifteen-reading-activities-pattern, element/bcirc-program-element
product_kind	programme
generated	by process:sweep-kinds on 2026-10-10
trust	unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources	1 — bilingual-cooperative-integrated-reading-and-composition-2007

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