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Our series on literacy across academic subjects has covered specific interventions in math and science. In contrast to these subjects, the link between social studies and literacy is more straightforward. All states have social studies content standards (Civics Alliance, 2025), though fewer mandate the sort of end-of-course assessments required in math and reading (Savage & Ikoma, 2025). These standards frequently highlight the importance of skills associated with literacy. For example, in Iowa, expectations for students include the ability to analyze and critique evidence, interpret laws and other primary source documents, and compare perspectives across numerous areas, including civics, economics, and history (Iowa Department of Education, n.d.). These tasks require mastery of fundamental and advanced literacy skills, which national reading assessments suggest many students continue to struggle with (Ciullo & Dimino, 2017).
Many effective literacy interventions are essentially forms of explicit instruction, a multifaceted approach that involves (a) segmenting complex skills, (b) highlighting important elements of performance for learners, (c) systematically fading support, (d) providing opportunities for practice and feedback, and (e) creating opportunities for independent practice (Hughes et al., 2017). The IRRC has previously provided tools related to explicit literacy instruction (e.g., cursive handwriting). In this post, I provide a detailed overview of an explicit instruction intervention with particular utility in social studies, collaborative strategic reading (CSR)—research-based, whole-group comprehension strategy linked to improvements in comprehension of expository and narrative texts (e.g., Boardman et al., 2016; Klingner et al., 1998).
Increasing Student Involvement in the Comprehension Process: Collaborative Strategic Reading
CSR consists of four strategies that are designed to increase student engagement in comprehension: (1) Preview; (2) Click and Clunk; (3) Get the Gist; and (4) Wrap Up (Klingner & Vaughn, 1998). Students employ these strategies with instructor guidance first before applying them independently in small groups.
Preview
Previewing involves having the student review headings, graphics, and keywords for a few minutes, then predict what the lesson might be about based on their prior knowledge. The latter step can be done orally and in writing. For example, a lesson concerning the Great Depression might be accompanied by photographs of people in breadlines along with words such as unemployment and poverty. Students might predict that the lesson concerns an event that led to people being unable to secure food or provide for their families.
Click and Clunk
Students Click and Clunk during reading by identifying portions of the text that make sense—clicks—as well as material (e.g., words, concepts) they do not understand—clunks. This strategy may be particularly helpful in subjects like social studies that may contain discipline-specific terms (e.g., secondary source, prime meridian) as well as unfamiliar nouns (e.g., stereotype) (Ciullo & Dimino, 2017).
Students address clunks using established fix-up strategies that include (a) using context to determine meaning (see our previous approach for an explicit strategy), (b) looking for known prefixes or suffixes, and (c) examining smaller components of the word (Vaughn & Klingner, 1998). These strategies are applied within small groups, with help from the teacher as needed. The original CSR study, for example, described a 4th grade social studies lesson in which a student identified the word “petroleum” as a clunk, and reasoned that it must involve police patrols of the land (Klingner et al., 1998). With the assistance of their group—and later, the teacher—the student was assisted in identifying the correct meaning. Click and Clunk essentially teaches children to monitor their own comprehension and seek assistance as necessary, which is key to gradually improving comprehension and managing novel texts beyond the classroom.
Get the Gist
The Get the Gist component of CSR requires students to identify the most important element of a text and express the main idea in as few words as possible (Ciullo & Dimino, 2017; Klingner & Vaughn, 1998). This provides students with practice in understanding, condensing and retaining the key information from passages, and can involve students comparing their passage syntheses within their groups. Students often grasp the importance of this activity and readily participate, though students who have difficulties with reading may need assistance in providing longer summaries about passages (Klingner et al., 1998). For example, one student may provide a more detailed summary of a passage about the westward expansion (e.g., government support for settlement), whereas another may simply state, “People moved to find new land.”
Wrap Up
The final component of CSR, Wrap Up, improves knowledge, memory, and understanding of the passage by encouraging students to write questions based on the reading (Klingner & Vaughn, 1998). Students should be prompted to ask questions whose answers are explicitly addressed in the passage as well as those that require extending the text. Students can receive prompts to promote higher-order questions—for example, a civics lesson on the different branches of government might conclude with students being asked to compare the powers of the legislative and executive branches or consider what might happen if one branch gained more authority than the others. Prompts such as these encourage students not only to recall facts but also to analyze, predict, and critique, deepening their understanding of how government functions.
Teaching CSR
At first glance, the steps in CSR may seem self-explanatory, or something that will not require extensive practice for students to employ correctly. It may also be tempting to believe that exposing students to interesting or especially relevant topics alone will help reading difficulties without an explicit strategy. Research suggests, however, that students must have both the motivation and the skills to extract meaning from text (Huang & Chen, 2018). Even for students who are motivated by subject matter, they can develop more positive attitudes toward tasks when they have been prepared to succeed.
No matter how intuitive the elements of CSR may seem to instructors, getting students to use the techniques in practice may require a structured approach to training that emphasizes the definition, purpose, and appropriate use of each strategy (Ciullo & Dimino, 2017). Teaching should begin by providing a clear statement for what a strategy is and why it is important. This is particularly important for steps, such as previewing, for which the significance may not be entirely clear (Klingner et al., 1998). Additionally, students need to know when to use the strategies and how they are performed, which can include modeling specific roles for group members (e.g., timekeeper, Gist Expert). This latter step will require at least one guided practice session, where the instructor demonstrates the use of each CSR component, accompanied by think-alouds, followed by opportunities to use the steps with prompting, and—finally—independently.
Resources
Researchers have evaluated and disseminated CSR for decades. Consequently, there are several high-quality resources available for instructors. Reading Rockets provides a free, accessible description of CSR procedures and materials authored by scholars involved in the original studies. Detailed learning modules with video examples, practice opportunities, and other resources are available through Vanderbilt University and the University of Colorado, though registration is required.
CSR represents a generally effective method for improving students’ comprehension outcomes in social studies classes. As with other practices addressed in this series, CSR is but one example of a literacy strategy that can be employed in the content areas. Literacy is every subject—and fully integrating literacy into content area courses will take more than a few techniques. Students can benefit from a comprehensive approach to both literacy and academic content rooted in explicit instruction and other fundamentally sound approaches to learning.
References
Boardman, A. G., Vaughn, S., Buckley, P., Reutebuch, C., Roberts, G., & Klingner, J. (2016). Collaborative strategic reading for students with learning disabilities in upper elementary classrooms. Exceptional Children, 82(4), 409-427. https://doi.org/10.1177/0014402915625067
Ciullo, S., & Dimino, J. A. (2017). The strategic use of scaffolded instruction in social studies interventions for students with learning disabilities. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 32(3), 155-165. https://doi.org/10.1111/ldrp.12138
Ciullo, S., Collins, A., Wissinger, D. R., McKenna, J. W., Lo, Y. L., & Osman, D. (2020). Students with learning disabilities in the social studies: A meta-analysis of intervention research. Exceptional Children, 86(4), 393-412. https://doi.org/10.1177/0014402919893932
Huang, J., & Chen, G. (2019). From reading strategy instruction to student reading achievement: The mediating role of student motivational factors. Psychology in the Schools, 56(5), 724-740. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.22217
Iowa Department of Education. (n.d.). Iowa social studies standards. https://educate.iowa.gov/pk-12/standards/academics/social-studies
Klingner, J. K., Vaughn, S., & Schumm, J. S. (1998). Collaborative strategic reading during social studies in heterogeneous fourth-grade classrooms. The Elementary School Journal, 99(1), 3-22. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1086/461914
Klingner, J. K., & Vaughn, S. (n.d.). Using collaborative strategic reading. Reading Rockets: Launching Young Readers. https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/comprehension/articles/using-collaborative-strategic-reading#materials-for-csr
Klingner, J. K., & Vaughn, S. (1998). Using collaborative strategic reading. Teaching Exceptional Children, 30(6), 32-37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/004005999803000607
National Association of Scholars. (2025). State social studies standards. https://civicsalliance.org/state-social-studies-standards/
The IRIS Center. (2008). CSR: A Reading Comprehension Strategy [Online module]. Peabody College, Vanderbilt University. https://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/module/csr/#content
Savage, C., & Ikoma, S. (2025). Access to civics content and evidence-based instructional approaches in US schools. Large-scale Assessments in Education, 13(1), 25. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40536-025-00257-8
Swanson, E., Hairrell, A., Kent, S., Ciullo, S., Wanzek, J. A., & Vaughn, S. (2014). A synthesis and meta-analysis of reading interventions using social studies content for students with learning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 47(2), 178-195. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022219412451131
University of Colorado. (n.d.). Collaborative strategic reading toolkit [Online module]. https://toolkit.csrcolorado.org