A Longitudinal Randomized Trial of a Sustained Content Literacy Intervention from First to Second Grade: Transfer Effects on Students’ Reading Comprehension

This longitudinal randomized controlled trial examines whether a sustained content literacy intervention spanning first and second grade can promote transfer effects on students’ reading comprehension. Implemented across 30 elementary schools and nearly 3,000 students, the Model of Reading Engagement (MORE) aligned thematic science and social studies instruction across grades and paired school-year lessons with wide reading of thematically related texts during the summer. Results show that students who participated in MORE experienced smaller summer losses and faster growth in domain-general reading comprehension from Grade 1 to Grade 2 and significantly outperformed peers on Grade 2 science content reading comprehension (ES = .18). Transfer effects were strongest on passages that included networks of domain-specific vocabulary taught during instruction (near- and mid-transfer) and weaker on far-transfer passages with no such cues. The findings demonstrate that sustaining and aligning content literacy instruction across grades builds knowledge schemas that support meaningful transfer in reading comprehension, particularly for informational texts.