Improving reading comprehension of at-risk high-school students: The ART of reading program

Participants (115 low‐socioeconomic‐status [SES], inner‐city, high‐school students) were exposed to three reading conditions: (1) a control condition in which students silently read brief selected passages; (2) an experimental condition in which students were prompted to perform a three‐part (Ask, Read, and Tell [ART]) comprehension enhancement exercise before, during, and after reading the selected passages; and (3) another experimental condition in which ART was followed by peer discussion (PD) of the reading. Students answered 10 comprehension questions after reading passages under each condition, which served as the dependent variable. Results of a repeated‐measures analysis of variance revealed a significant main effect, and follow‐up analysis showed significantly higher levels of comprehension on ART + PD passages relative to either the control or ART passages. Discussion focuses on using PD to enhance comprehension and future research to determine which combination of intervention components are necessary to occasion enhanced comprehension. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.