ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the on-going development of a comprehensive reading comprehension program to be delivered by tutors in one-to-one sessions to third- and fourth-grade children at-risk for school failure. It develops a comprehensive program because reading for understanding requires the use of multiple skills and strategies. The program is comprehensive in two ways. It aims to teach a relatively large set of skills and strategies. The chapter integrates the teaching with cognitive training because many with poor comprehension also demonstrate weak cognitive abilities, such as working memory, that are strongly associated with understanding text. It characterizes our reading comprehension program as intensive intervention, partly because of its relative comprehensiveness, and describes a recently completed randomized control trial of its effects. The chapter contextualizes intensive intervention by discussing its relationship to Responsiveness to Intervention. Controlling for pretreatment reading comprehension, classroom and school effects, no statistically significant differences were detected between any of the treatment conditions and control on posttreatment reading comprehension.
