More People Should Know About the Bookworms Literacy Curriculum

Studies show it boosts reading comprehension and fluency, and teachers say it boosts engagement too.

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The evidence is mounting that an elementary literacy curriculum called Bookworms K-5 Reading and Writing can significantly boost reading outcomes, especially for lower-achieving students. But it isn’t nearly as well known as some other knowledge-building curricula.

A recent rigorous study, which included about 8,800 students over three years, found that students who got the content-rich curriculum showed marked improvement on a standardized reading comprehension test. By the end of fifth grade, the effect size—a standardized measure that researchers use to evaluate the practical significance of an intervention—was 0.26. In the context of education interventions, that’s considered large.

The study was done in a rural district where more than half of students came from families poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-price school meals. Students who started out weakest experienced the most growth, and the highest achievers improved slightly.

Rather than comparing one group of students to a similar “control” group, the study used statistical methods to compare students against their expected growth trajectories based on their performance under the prior curriculum. Researchers also based their conclusions on the trajectories of previous cohorts of students who had gotten the old curriculum. (The creator of Bookworms, Dr. Sharon Walpole, is listed as an author on the study but “did not influence the study design or results.”)

Some previous studies of Bookworms have also found impressive results. One that was done in 2017, for example, found that after just one year of implementation, students’ comprehension improved significantly (effect size 0.42) in grades three, four, and five as compared to a control group. Fluency improved in grades three and five (effect size 0.55). “We know of no other program that has produced results of this magnitude so quickly upon initial implementation,” a trio of literacy experts wrote of that study in 2018.

Improvements in Scores and Engagement

There’s also anecdotal evidence of Bookworms’ effectiveness from schools and districts that have used it. After Seaford, Delaware, adopted the curriculum, it went from being the bottom district in the state to one of its highest-achieving in grades three to five, with students in all subgroups making gains. Even in the first year of implementation, the percentage of third-graders scoring proficient on state reading tests zoomed from 36% to 52%. Similarly, Cecil County, Maryland, went from being near the bottom in state test scores in 2016 to becoming, in 2019, the state’s fastest-improving county.

Walpole, the creator of the curriculum, is a reading researcher rather than a traditional curriculum publisher, and Bookworms is an “open educational resource.” The lesson plans are available for free, although schools need to purchase the books the curriculum uses.

While it’s possible to simply download and use the curriculum, some schools and districts access it through a nonprofit publisher called Open Up Resources, which also helps them secure training in how to use the curriculum for a fee. Cecil County officials said they saved about $1 million a year by using Bookworms compared to what they would have spent on more widely used literacy programs—money they were able to spend on teachers’ professional development.

I recently heard an unsolicited testimonial from a principal I happened to sit next to at an education conference, Dr. Melynda Hache. Her school—an elementary school near Phoenix that is part of the Imagine Schools charter network—is only midway through its first year of using Bookworms but is already seeing significant improvements in reading growth measures. Teachers and students are happy with the curriculum, she said, and it’s proven easy to implement as compared to other programs.

Bookworms doesn’t just boost reading scores. From what I’ve seen and heard, it can also turn students into engaged, enthusiastic readers. Rather than being limited to brief stories or excerpts that have been determined to be at their individual reading level, kids are exposed to full-length books—more than 250 of them between kindergarten and fifth grade. Some, which are generally above grade level, are read aloud by the teacher. Others are read by students during the “Shared Reading” block, with a pause for brief instruction in one of a limited number of reading comprehension strategies.

Content-Rich Texts and Science-Backed Routines

The texts are chosen and organized to build students’ knowledge, covering topics in science and social studies along with fiction. Students write about what they’re learning, engage in teacher-led discussions of the content, and have opportunities to read books of their own choosing. The curriculum also covers foundational reading skills like phonics, with differentiated instruction based on frequent assessments. Bookworms is one of eight curricula identified as highly effective by the Knowledge Matters Campaign. (I serve on the board of the Knowledge Matters Campaign’s parent organization.)

Several years ago, I tagged along on a Knowledge Matters School Tour visit to a school in Laurel, Delaware, that had recently adopted Bookworms. Teacher after teacher said their students—and they themselves—got swept up in the books. That included even the “hard-to-reach” kids.

“If we’re reading chapter books,” one said, “they want to read the next chapter.” Students also wanted to read more books by the same author or on the same topic, and the school librarian was scrambling to respond to their requests. Children were discussing the books on their own, outside of class. Writing was improving markedly too, teachers said.

Walpole says that Bookworms incorporates routines based on the science of reading that help explain its ability to dramatically boost reading fluency and comprehension. During Shared Reading, students read the same chunk of text twice every day, first chorally and then with a partner. Each time there’s a different purpose for reading—perhaps, on the first read, determining who the main character is, and then on the second, a more complex purpose such as examining point of view. There’s evidence, Walpole says, that repeated reading of the same text builds fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary.

In addition, she thinks choral reading helps all students engage, regardless of their ability to read text independently. A student who is still learning to decipher words might not be able to do much of that on the first try but then read more words on the second round. Sticking with the same text over a period of days can also help, as students get used to an author’s style and vocabulary.

Why It’s Not More Widely Used

But despite these positive results, Bookworms is used far less frequently than most other literacy curricula. It’s hard to know exactly how many schools are using it, because some just download it for free. Open Up Resources keeps track of how many schools are using their services to access the curriculum, but the company declined to give an exact number, saying only that “last year, OUR engaged with 34 states that have districts within them using materials purchased from OUR.”

One big reason it’s not more widely used is that an influential organization called EdReports, which evaluates curricula, hasn’t given Bookworms its top ratings—“green” on all three of its measures rather than “red” or “yellow.” Bookworms has gotten green for some components of its curriculum but its overall ratings have been yellow. In recent years, some literacy experts have questioned the reliability of some of EdReports’ green and yellow ratings—a topic I’ll be exploring in more detail in my next post.

Kristen McQuillan, a literacy consultant who works with school districts on their adoption and implementation of curricula, has seen Bookworms in action and calls it “fabulous.”

“Given that it's such a great option for schools,” McQuillan wrote in an email, “it's really a tragedy that it's not all green on EdReports, which means that many will overlook a program that could really help them realize a vision of joyful, evidence-based reading and writing instruction.”

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.