Put Me In, Coach! How Trained Literacy Coaches and Teachers Can Improve Student Reading Comprehension

The language and reading comprehension skills of low-income upper elementary-school students—especially English-language learners—can improve markedly if trained literacy coaches engage teachers in conducting interactive text discussions with students, according to a three-year University of Pittsburgh study.

The Pitt researchers report measurable improvement for young students when their teachers had worked “at-elbow” with content-specific literacy coaches to foster a more interactive learning environment during class reading assignments.

In the study—one of the first of its kind—the coaches were trained using a professional development system designed at Pitt’s Institute for Learning called the Content-Focused Coaching Model® that has coaches provide teachers with the tools they need to implement rigorous, standards-based lessons. Teachers can then use the knowledge they’ve gained to train other teachers in their schools.

“Our goal was to create a method for closing the literacy gap between more privileged and low-income students,”

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