Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI) was developed in 1993 by Dr. John T. Guthrie with a team of elementary teachers and graduate students. The project designed and implemented a framework of conceptually oriented reading instruction to improve students' amount and breadth of reading, intrinsic motivations for reading, and strategies of search and comprehension. The framework emphasized five phases of reading instruction in a content domain: observing and personalizing, searching and retrieving, comprehending and integrating, communicating to others, and interacting with peers to construct meaning. CORI instruction was contrasted to experience-based teaching and strategy instruction in terms of its support for motivational and cognitive development.

History

CORI's aims are to support:

Reading Comprehension via activating background knowledge, questioning, summarizing, searching, organizing graphically, and interpreting stories Science Inquiry via observation, using knowledge, questioning, designing investigations, collecting data, drawing conclusions, and explaining results conceptually. The science theme was the survival concepts (ecology) of feeding, locomotion, defense, predation, respiration, reproduction, competition, communication, and adjustment to habitat. Motivation via knowledge goals for reading, hands-on experiences, interesting books, choices about learning, and collaboration with classmates Reading and Science Integration via relating observations in hands-on science activities to contents and characters in literary and information books and connecting students' interests in the environment to their motivations for book reading Student Writing via writing entries in portfolios that demonstrated the following: information text reading, literary text reading, science concepts, science processes, and motivation for reading.

“For nearly 20 years, Guthrie and colleagues have been refining CORI, a program designed to promote a number of literacy goals through the use of broad interdisciplinary themes, primarily drawn from science curricula, such as exploring the impact of humans on animal habitats. CORI provides explicit instruction in reading strategies, such a questioning, activating background knowledge, searching for information, summarizing, and synthesizing information in order to communicate with others. Instruction involves hands-on investigations, inquiry with text, strategy instruction, working in collaborative inquiry teams, and writing to publish and present findings. CORI has been shown to increase students’ science inquiry strategies, and overall text comprehension compared to control classrooms with separate science and literacy curricula and/or strategy instruction in reading alone. Of particular interest in the CORI research is the pivotal role that motivation, in all of its instantiations (interest, self-efficacy, and achievement motivation), plays in learning both science and literacy.”

CORI investigated the motivations, cognitive competencies, and instructional support needed to increase reading comprehension and engagement of middle school students in science concepts (ecology) and social studies (U.S. Civil War) through the Reading Engagement for Adolescent Learning (REAL) Project. Reading comprehension strategies included: activating background knowledge, questioning, summarizing, inferencing, and concept mapping. Intrinsic motivations included involvement, challenge, curiosity, social interactions, and the teaching of concepts and inquiry skills. Books, educational videos, websites, and other supplemental materials were used to aid students’ learning and teachers’ instruction.

The CORI program equipped participating teachers with the skills to accomplish these classroom goals through interactive professional development workshops. These workshops were given several times during the school year with these teacher-desired outcomes in the following areas:

Classroom practices: support for motivation; foster engagement with text; sustain reading engagement across the year; energize learning from information text; connect Common Core State Standards to motivation; use research-based approaches

Motivation and engagement practices: setting up partnerships, collaborations, and teams; providing productive choices, large and small; building relevance into reading and writing; encouraging reading values; enabling students to develop their identities; increasing learning in Common Core State Standards

Integrating cognitive strategy instruction includes guidance to: teach higher-order reading skills, improve students' information text comprehension, integrate reading in content domains, provide strategy instruction in subject matters, target digital literacies and traditional textbooks

The objective of CORI is to increase the amount of engaged reading through the use of explicit cognitive and motivational supports or scaffolds. Cognitively, the CORI program stresses the learning of conceptual ideas.

Program specifics

CORI instruction can take place within the domain of any subject matter at any grade level. Lessons are developed for the express purpose of increasing student engagement. In turn, students’ amount of reading increases, and ultimately, their use of reading strategies, intrinsic motivation, and achievement increase. Texts on a topic are made available to the students, and along with strategy instruction and motivational support, deep understanding of a concept develops. This shows CORI's emphasis on thematic learning.

In keeping with a guided reading model of instruction, lessons were provided for small groups at the struggling reader, on-grade level, and advanced reader levels. Writing and independent reading are part of the CORI program, as is a culminating activity for a unit of study.

Teacher training modules, classroom videos, related research articles and books, and research findings in elementary and middle schools on the CORI website www.corilearning.com provide necessary information to become further informed about this program.

References

Further reading

Books Guthrie, J. T. (Ed.). (2008). Engaging adolescents in reading . Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Guthrie, J. T., Wigfield, A., & Perencevich, K. C. (Eds.) (2004). Motivating reading comprehension: Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Peer-reviewed Journal Articles Ho, A. N., & Guthrie, J. T. (2013). Patterns of association among multiple motivations and aspects of achievement in reading. Reading Psychology, 34, 1-47. Guthrie, J. T., Coddington, C. S., & Wigfield, A. (2009). Profiles of motivation for reading among African American and Caucasian students. Journal of Literacy Research, 41, 317–353. Download – for personal use only Guthrie, J. T., McRae, A., Coddington, C. S., Klauda, S. L., Wigfield, A., & Barbosa, P. (2009). Impacts of comprehensive reading instruction on diverse outcomes of low-achieving and high-achieving readers. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 42, 195–214.Download – for personal use only Coddington, C. S., & Guthrie, J. T. (2009). Teacher and student perceptions of boys’ and girls’ reading motivation. Reading Psychology, 30, 225–249.Download – for personal use only Taboada, A., Tonks, S. M., Wigfield, A. & Guthrie, J. T. (2009). Effects of motivational and cognitive variables on reading comprehension. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 22, 85–106. Klauda, S. L. & Guthrie, J. T. (2008). Relationships of three components of reading fluency to reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100, 310–321.Download – for personal use only Guthrie, J. T., Hoa, L. W., Wigfield, A., Tonks, S. M., Humenick, N. M., & Littles, E. (2007). Reading motivation and reading comprehension growth in the later elementary years. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 32, 282–313.Download – for personal use only Guthrie, J. T., Hoa, L. W., Wigfield, A., Tonks, S. M., & Perencevich, K. C. (2006). From spark to fire: Can situational reading interest lead to long-term reading motivation? Reading Research and Instruction, 45, 91–117. Download – for personal use only Lutz, S. L., Guthrie, J. T., & Davis, M. H. (2006). Scaffolding for engagement in learning: An observational study of elementary school reading instruction. Journal of Educational Research, 100, 3-20.Download – for personal use only Guthrie, J. T., Wigfield, A., Humenick, N. M., Perencevich, K. C., Taboada, A., & Barbosa, P. (2006). Influences of stimulating tasks on reading motivation and comprehension. Journal of Educational Research, 99, 232–245. Download – for personal use only Guthrie, J. T. (2004). Teaching for literacy engagement. Journal of Literacy Research, 36, 1-30. Ozgungor, S., & Guthrie, J. T. (2004). Interactions among elaborative interrogation, knowledge, and interest in the process of constructing knowledge from text. Journal of Educational Psychology, 96, 437–443.Download – for personal use only Wang, J. H., & Guthrie, J. T. (2004). Modeling the effects of intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, amount of reading, and past reading achievement on text comprehension between U.S. and Chinese students. Reading Research Quarterly, 39, 162–186. Wigfield, A., Guthrie, J. T., Tonks, S., & Perencevich, K. C. (2004). Children's motivation for reading: Domain specificity and instructional influences. Journal of Educational Research, 97, 299–309.Download – for personal use only Guthrie, J. T., & Davis, M. H. (2003). Motivating struggling readers in middle school through an engagement model of classroom practice. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 19, 59–85.Download – for personal use only Guthrie, J. T., Wigfield, A., & VonSecker, C. (2000) Effects of integrated instruction on motivation and strategy use in reading. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92, 331–341.Download – for personal use only Guthrie, J. T., Van Meter, P., Hancock, G. R., McCann, A., Anderson, E., & Alao, S. (1998). Does Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction increase strategy-use and conceptual learning from text? Journal of Educational Psychology, 90, 261–278.Download – for personal use only Swan, E. (1998). Motivational and cognitive influences on conceptual knowledge: The combination of science observation and interesting texts. (Doctoral dissertation). Download – for personal use only Guthrie, J. T., Van Meter, P. McCann, A. D., & Wigfield, A. (1996). Growth of literacy engagement: Changes in motivations and strategies during Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 31, 306–332.

Chapters Guthrie, J. T., Wigfield, A., & You, W. (2012). Instructional contexts for engagement and achievement in reading. In S. Christensen, A. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.), Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 601–634). New York: Springer Science. Guthrie, J. T., & McRae, A. (2011). Reading engagement among African American and European American students. In S. J. Samuels & A. E. Farstrup (Eds.), What research has to say about reading instruction (4th ed.). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Swan, E. A., Coddington, C. S., & Guthrie, J. T. (2010). Engaged silent reading. In E. H. Hiebert & D. R. Reutzel (Eds.), Revisiting silent reading (pp. 95–111). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Wigfield, A., & Guthrie, J. T. (2010). The impact of Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction on students’ reading motivation, reading engagement, and reading comprehension. In J. L. Meece & J. S. Eccles (Eds.), Handbook of research on schools, schooling, and human development (pp. 463–477). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Guthrie, J. T., & Coddington, C. S. (2009). Reading motivation. In K. Wentzel & A. Wigfield, (Eds.), Handbook of motivation at school (pp. 503–525). New York: Routledge.