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.