The Effects of the RAP Strategy Used in a Peer-Tutoring Setting to Foster Reading Comprehension in High-Risk Fourth Graders

Children who do not adequately master the transition from "learning to read" (LTR) to "reading to learn" (RTL) will clearly fall behind in every subject area during their secondary education. The purpose of this study was to determine whether a simple reading comprehension strategy developed by Schumaker, Denton, and Deshler (1984) ("RAP", Read, Ask, and Put) is suitable for application as a low-threshold peer-tutoring intervention under everyday school conditions and to test its efficacy for at-risk students. A randomized two-group design with repeated measures was implemented. We included 22 teams of low-achieving (tutees) and high-achieving (tutors) fourth graders. For the first three weeks, the tutees in the first group were trained in the use of the RAP strategy combined with a token economy, while the students in the second group continued to perform regular classroom activities. During the following four weeks, a scoring system, visual feedback, and verbal encouragement on the basis of attribution theory were employed as interventional components, and all twenty-two low-achieving children received the intervention. The students at risk in the first group improved only slightly in their comprehension skills during the first phase of the experiment, whereas they demonstrated striking gains in the subsequent four weeks. Although the tutees in the second group only participated in the intervention for four weeks, they also exhibited respectable enhancements. The explorative nature of this study does not allow for causal inferences. However, the results provide hope that supporting struggling text comprehenders during their last year of elementary school by using the RAP strategy within a peer-tutorial setting can significantly improve their skill level if the intervention continues for several weeks, including scoring, visual feedback, and operant conditioning.