The University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning (KU-CRL) has a long and successful history as a research and development center focusing on adolescent literacy. From its inception in 1978 as one of five national research centers for children and adolescents with learning disabilities, researchers have developed multiple iterations of reading and other literacy interventions. While the varied reading interventions may have a common core, they are individually unique and reflect findings from our extensive applied research experience and the growing body of literacy research. Fusion Reading is our most recent comprehensive reading program and is distinct from anything we have previously developed and tested. For example FR is a two-year program with fewer strategies that are taught at a much deeper level. Also, FR’s instructional methodology reflects a belief that reading strategies are secondary to and useful to the extent that they are supportive of the reading process. These, and other characteristics, make FR the KU-CRL’s latest, and we believe, most effective and state of the art adolescent reading program in our literacy inventory. FR is described below.
FR is a supplemental reading course that is designed to meet daily for one class period. Ideally, classes consist of 15-18 striving readers who score at least two years below grade level. FR is a highly structured course designed to teach an array of high-leverage reading strategies within a scaffolded scope and sequence of instruction, practice, feedback, and ongoing assessments for progress monitoring. A major goal of FR is to increase student motivation, engagement, and reading outcomes. Reading instruction in the FR is built upon the two primary components of the Simple View of Reading: word recognition (instructional components designed to teach striving readers advanced phonics, decoding, word recognition, and fluency skills and strategies) and linguistic comprehension (instructional components designed to enhance striving readers skills in making predictions, generating questions, drawing inferences, paraphrasing, summarizing, building a strong vocabulary, and using high leverage strategies to take standardized examinations (e.g., state assessments). FR is a fully developed instructional package. That is, all FR materials (seven teacher manuals and three student workbooks) have been produced and are “off the shelf” ready for full-scale implementation.
