Chapter 15 page 362
cooperation, students are provided with clear guidelines for questions to ask each other as they work in
pairs. In pairs, the students retell passages, summarize what they read, and make predictions.
Special educators Douglas Fuchs, Lynn Fuchs, and their colleagues (1997) conducted a study in
which they investigated the effectiveness of PALS as a collaborative learning method. They divided 22
schools into high-level, medium-level, and low-level schools, based on reading performance of the schools
and the proportion of students on free or reduced lunch programs. (For instance, low-level schools were
those with low reading scores and high proportions of students on free or reduced lunch.) Half of the
schools at each level (high, medium, and low) were randomly assigned to the PALS condition, and half
were assigned to the condition without PALS (no-PALS). Forty third-grade teachers in these schools
volunteered. Each teacher elected a student with learning disabilities, a student who was a low-performing
reader but did not have a learning disability, and an average-performing reader. The study focused on these
three students in each class.
In the PALS condition, teachers implemented PALS 35 minutes per day, 3 times a week, for 15
weeks. Teachers paired all the students in their classes so that stronger readers were paired with weaker
readers throughout the class. PALS pairs engaged in three kinds of guided cooperation activities: partner
reading with retell, paragraph summery, and prediction relay.
Partner reading with retell. In this group, the stronger reader read the text for 5 minutes. The
weaker reader played the role of the tutor, checking and correcting any errors. Then the weaker
reader read the same text while the stronger readier acting as the tutor. Thus, the students took
turns playing the role of tutor. (Reading the same text a second time was intended to enhance the
reading fluency of the weaker reader.) After each student finished reading, the partner asked the
reader what he or she had learned first, next, and so on. The tutor’s role was to fill in any
information that the reader forgot.
Paragraph summary. This activity required students to take turns reading one paragraph at a time
and then answer some questions, such as “Who or what was the paragraph about?” or “Tell the
most important thing you learned in the paragraph.” The students again took turns playing the
role of tutor. The tutor was to follow up on incorrect responses by saying, “Try again.”
Prediction relay. Beginning in the fifth week, students participated in prediction relay, in which
readers made predictions about the contents of the next page, read aloud from the next page,
checked the prediction, summarized the text that was just read, and then continued the cycle with
a new prediction. After 5 minutes, the students switched roles.
All pairs in each class were also assigned to one of two class teams. Teams won points based on how
successfully they achieved a number of goals, including: error-free partner reading, accurate retelling of the
story, accurate presentations of summaries, reasonable predictions, and fulfilling other task requirements.
Tutors and teachers were in charge of awarding the points each week. At the presentation of the award, the
winning team stood and was applauded by the losing team; there were no other rewards of any kind. Thus,
PALS uses a form of group rewards for individual learning. Several of the key features of the study are
summarized in Figure 15.2.