Research to Practice

Sharon Walpole is partnering with long-time collaborator Michael McKenna (University of Virginia) to use formative experiment techniques to enhance a K-5 curriculum the two have written. The pair developed Bookworms, a free, open-access, elementary ELA curriculum

The curriculum was initially introduced in a rural school system in Georgia. It has been associated with gains in both reading fluency and reading comprehension in the upper elementary grades. Videos of their lessons are posted on the Georgia Striving Readers site to show the curriculum in action.

Now in its third year, seven districts in Georgia and a district in Seaford, DE, use the Bookworms curriculum and the site has registered over 140,000 visits from 150 countries.

The research project will observation, focus groups, and implementation logs to investigate the feasibility of daily lesson plans. They will be revised based on feedback, and then implemented again in 2016-17. In addition, the researchers will add a home reading component. This research project will last for two years, and is funded by the US Department of Education.