Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition®

Product or Programme · All products and programmes
Evidence · 10 claims (4 for, 5 mixed, 1 against) · 8 studies (6 causal, 2 quant-synthesis), q2–q3 · 3 of 8 report an effect size · 9 claims rest on one study

Description

A grades 2–6 cooperative reading, comprehension, language arts, and writing curriculum developed by Robert Slavin and Nancy Madden at Johns Hopkins University and distributed by the Success for All Foundation.

Components

• Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition® (CIRC) program: CIRC is a reading and writing program for students in grades 2–6, developed in 1983 by Robert Slavin and Nancy Madden at Johns Hopkins University and distributed by the Success for All Foundation. It has "three principal elements: story-related activities, direct instruction in reading comprehension, and integrated language arts/writing." Daily 90-minute lessons have mixed-ability students work in pairs and cooperative teams of four to read to each other, predict story endings, summarize, clarify vocabulary, reread for fluency, and draft, revise, and edit one another's writing, with team-based rewards for motivation. A Spanish version exists for grades 2–5, and the program costs approximatel (Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC))
• Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition® (CIRC) reading and writing program: CIRC is a reading and writing program for students in grades 2 through 6 with three principal elements: "story-related activities, direct instruction in reading comprehension, and integrated language arts/ writing". Daily 90-minute lessons have mixed-ability teams reading, discussing, rereading for fluency, and working through drafting, revising, and editing, with team-based rewards for motivation. A Spanish version is available for grades 2 through 5, and the program is distributed by the Success for All Foundation as part of the Success for All model or stand-alone. (Cooperative Integrated Reading et al. (2010))

Claims

• The cooperative learning component's added benefit over direct instruction alone with CIRC materials was not statistically significant on main idea identification [~W]
• CIRC shows no discernible effects on general reading achievement for beginning readers (effect size 0.02) [-W]
• CIRC has potentially positive effects on comprehension for beginning readers, with an average improvement index of +12 percentile points across two studies [+W]
• In a quasi-experimental study, CIRC showed no statistically significant effect on comprehension outcomes after WWC clustering and multiple-comparison adjustments [~W]
• In the Bramlett quasi-experiment, no comprehension subtest or ability-level subgroup showed a statistically significant CIRC effect after WWC adjustments [~W]
• In a cluster randomized trial, CIRC produced a statistically significant positive effect on main idea identification (effect size 0.85) but not on inference questions [+M]
• CIRC showed a statistically significant positive effect on CAT Language Expression but not CAT Language Mechanics in Stevens and Slavin (1995), and no significant effect on the Bass Academic Skills Sample Reading Proficiency subtest in Jewell (1994) [~W] — (also cited [+W])
• Stevens and Slavin (1995) found statistically significant positive effects of CIRC on CAT Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary subtests, while Jewell (1994) found no statistically significant effects [~W] — (also cited [+W])
• WWC finds CIRC has potentially positive effects on general literacy achievement for adolescent learners (average improvement index +2 percentile points) [+W]
• WWC finds Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition® has potentially positive effects on comprehension for adolescent learners (average improvement index +7 percentile points) [+W]

Related Products and Programmes

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Key Sources

• U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, What Works Clearinghouse. (2012, June). Beginning Reading intervention report: Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition®. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/InterventionReport/109
• Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition®. (2010). WWC Intervention Report, Adolescent Literacy. What Works Clearinghouse, U.S. Department of Education. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/InterventionReport/111

Page metadata

Field	Value
type	product
id	cooperative-integrated-reading-and-composition
title	Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition®
description	A grades 2–6 cooperative reading, comprehension, language arts, and writing curriculum developed by Robert Slavin and Nancy Madden at Johns Hopkins University and distributed by the Success for All Foundation.
status	review
moved_from	element/circ-program-element, element/circ-reading-writing-program
product_kind	curriculum
generated	by process:sweep-kinds on 2026-10-10
trust	unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources	2 — us-department-of-education-institute, cooperative-integrated-reading-and-composition-2010

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