Project Rise (Reading Through Interactive And Strategic Exercises): A Reading Intervention Program to Improve the Comprehension Skills of  Struggling Readers at Tuhian Elementary School

This study determined the effectiveness of Project RISE in improving the comprehension skills of Grades 5 and 6 struggling readers at Tuhian Elementary School. True experimental research design was utilized in this study. Specifically, pretest posttest control group design was employed to demonstrate causality between the intervention and an outcome. The respondents involved 28 Grades 5 and 6 struggling readers who comprised the control and experimental groups, which were formed through random sampling. In connection, the reading performance of the respondents in both groups was assessed using the standardized passages from Phil-IRI at two points of the experimental study: one was before the treatment (pretest) and the other one was after the treatment (posttest). The data gathered were analyzed and interpreted using weighted means. In connection, a test of normality of data was conducted using Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test. The results provide good evidence that the data are normally distributed. Thus, independent t-test, as a parametric test, was utilized to statistically treat the data. Meanwhile, Lavene’s test for equality of variance was employed to test the variances of pre-test scores both in control and experimental groups. The results suggest that there is no difference between the variances of both groups, which means that there is homogeneity before employing Project RISE in the treatment group and teacher-led reading approach in the control group.The study revealed that there was no significant difference between the pretest scores of control and experimental groups in terms of comprehension, which indicate that there was homogeneity before utilizing Project RISE. On the other hand, after the treatment, there was a significant difference between the posttest scores of the two groups. Therefore, there was a marked improvement in the reading performance of the respondents. This demonstrated that the respondents’ comprehension skills have improved.  The study focused on determining the effectiveness of Project RISE as a reading intervention program to enhance learners’ comprehension skills and limited to 28 respondents who comprised the control and experimental groups. Since the findings revealed that Project RISE, as a reading intervention program that provides explicit instruction within mixed-ability cooperative learning groups is effective, it can be used or adopted by other schools to enhance learners’ comprehension skills.