Open Court Reading

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

Description

Open Court Reading© is a K–6 comprehensive reading curriculum published by McGraw-Hill Education that provides systematic literacy instruction, decodable texts, anthologies, workbooks, and teacher materials.

Components

• Open Court Reading© K–6 comprehensive reading curriculum: Open Court Reading© is a reading program for grades K–6 published by McGraw-Hill Education, designed to teach decoding, comprehension, inquiry, and writing. The article describes it as organized "in a three-part logical progression", with grade-specific materials including decodable texts, student anthologies, workbooks, and a Teacher's Edition providing "systematic, explicit skills instruction centered on literature selections". In 2007 it was revised and renamed Imagine It!©. (Open Court Reading© (2014))
• Three-part unit progression: Preparing to Read, Reading and Responding, Language Arts: Each unit of Open Court Reading© is organized into three parts in a logical progression. Part One, Preparing to Read, addresses phonemic awareness, sounds and letters, phonics, fluency, and word knowledge; Part Two, Reading and Responding, emphasizes reading literature for understanding, comprehension, inquiry, and practical reading applications; Part Three, Language Arts, focuses on writing, spelling, grammar, usage, mechanics, and basic computer skills. The pattern sequences skills instruction before and alongside literature-based application and written language work. (Open Court Reading© (2014))

Claims

• Open Court Reading© has potentially positive effects on comprehension for beginning readers in grades 1–3, with a small extent of evidence [+W]
• Open Court Reading© has potentially positive effects on general reading achievement for beginning readers, with a small extent of evidence [+W]
• The evidence base for Open Court Reading© is thin: of 185 identified studies, only two met WWC group design standards, and none met standards for alphabetics or reading fluency [~W]

Related Products and Programmes

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Key Sources

• Open Court Reading©. (2014). WWC Intervention Report: Beginning Reading, Updated October 2014. U.S. Department of Education, What Works Clearinghouse. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/InterventionReport/347
• Open Court Reading©. (2014). WWC Intervention Report: Beginning Reading, Updated October 2014. U.S. Department of Education, What Works Clearinghouse. https://www.mheonline.com/

Page metadata

Field	Value
type	product
id	open-court-reading
title	Open Court Reading
description	Open Court Reading© is a K–6 comprehensive reading curriculum published by McGraw-Hill Education that provides systematic literacy instruction, decodable texts, anthologies, workbooks, and teacher materials.
status	review
moved_from	design/open-court-three-part-unit-progression, element/open-court-reading-curriculum-element
product_kind	curriculum
generated	by process:sweep-kinds on 2026-10-10
trust	unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources	1 — open-court-reading-2014

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