How STARI Works
STARI aims to accelerate the progress of struggling readers by addressing both basic reading skills, such as fluency and decoding, and deep comprehension skills simultaneously. A guiding theory of the STARI intervention is that talking to peers about what is read gives students access to multiple perspectives on a text and can promote more complex reasoning. Peer-to-peer talk is also helpful in supporting student motivation and engagement with text. Opportunities for talk are embedded in every component of the curriculum: fluency, decoding, partner reading, guided reading, and debates that are linked to unit themes.
See also: Using STARI with English Learners
DISCUSSION
In STARI, students:
- Engage in discussion every day
- Compare perspectives with a partner during fluency practice and partner reading
- Discuss ideas with a larger group during guided reading
Discussion supports reading development because: 
- Talk about text builds understanding
- Discussion boosts memory of what is read
- Talk supports academic language development
- Contrasting perspectives with peers pushes students past surface-level understandings of texts
- Hearing peers’ perspectives increases students’ ability to consider the perspectives of others, in literature and in life
- Discussion is motivating and engaging
Related documents:
Peek into a STARI classroom:
Ms. Phillips-Santos’ 8th grade class engages in a discussion of the novel Game, by Walter Dean Myers.
Partners in Ms. McKenzie’s 7th grade class discuss a fluency passage.
I feel like STARI is different from other ELA reading classes I've had before because in my reading classes I usually don't get opportunities to talk about my reading as much or discuss a specific text or a page from a book with a teacher. I feel like in STARI I could talk about my difficulties about the book that I have and clear any confusions that I have about it.
Lucy
7th Grade, New York City
FLUENCY
During STARI fluency routines, students:
- Improve their reading rate, accuracy, phrasing, and expression
- Engage in repeated readings of short texts (the research-based way to improve fluency)
- Read texts written at four different levels of difficulty, so every student is matched with their just-right level
- Practice academic language patterns
- Build background knowledge to support comprehension of unit texts
- Practice decoding skills they have been taught
- Discuss passages with a partner
- Practice reading progressively more difficult text over the course of the school year
Fluency supports reading development because:
- Poor fluency can hold students back from comprehending what they read
- Poor fluency can negatively affect reading engagement
- Fluency supports reading stamina; more fluent students can read more text in less time
- Fluency builds confidence
Related documents:
Peek into a STARI classroom:
Watch some highlights from these partners’ work with the STARI fluency routine in Ms. Poston’s 7th grade class.
The fluency routine helps the kids in a couple of ways. It definitely helps with their confidence. It also helps them to participate in the discussions more. So when they can access the text and when they can read the text, they're more willing to participate in the discussion.
Katrina Poston
STARI teacher, Baltimore
DECODING
During decoding instruction in STARI, students:
- Focus on just a few skills per unit
- Learn decoding skills through brief teacher-led mini-lessons
- Work with a partner to practice decoding skills using meaningful, engaging text
- Focus on chunking multisyllable words using meaning chunks (bases and affixes) and sound chunks (syllables)
Decoding instruction supports reading development because:
- Poor decoding skills can interfere with fluency and comprehension
- Improved decoding increases reading confidence and engagement
Peek into a STARI classroom:
Students in Ms. Kendall’s 8th grade class work in pairs to complete a decoding activity, chunking compound words.
This short clip from Ms. Lemond-Flaherty's class demonstrates how decoding practice is embedded into discussion of novels in STARI.
Being able to decode two, three syllable words is a significant challenge for a lot of the struggling readers. And that pointed us to the need for targeted skills lessons that we built into the STARI curriculum.
Lowry Hemphill
STARI Curriculum Developer, Boston University
STARI's sequence of decoding strategies instruction:
| UNIT 1 | UNIT 2 | UNIT 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Word Parts | Bases/Affixes | Bases/Affixes | |
| Common Syllable Patterns (VCCV, VCV) | VCCV | VCV | |
| Vowel sounds | Closed (CVC) syllables | Open (CV) syllables | |
| Vowel teams | Vowel teams |
COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES
During comprehension strategy instruction, students:
- Use the Reciprocal Teaching model of instruction
- Learn four comprehension strategies over the course of the school year (summarizing, clarifying, predicting, and questioning)
- Learn each strategy (1-2 per unit) through a brief teacher-led mini-lesson
- Learn how, when, and why to use each strategy
- Work with a partner to practice each strategy using core unit texts
Comprehension strategy instruction supports reading development because:
- Reciprocal Teaching is a research-based approach that has proved effective with general education students, special education students, and English learners, across both fiction and nonfiction texts
- Students develop the habits of skilled readers, such as monitoring for comprehension and using fix-up strategies when comprehension breaks down
- Students build up a repertoire of strategies over time, as each strategy is introduced and then reinforced in later units
- Students develop the ability to use these strategies with increasing independence and with increasingly complex texts
- Students practice comprehension strategies in partners as a scaffold between teacher-led use of strategies and independent use of strategies
Peek into a STARI classroom:
Partners in Ms. Kendall’s 8th grade class work together to summarize a section of the novel Game by Walter Dean Myers.
​​STARI does a nice job of spiraling the summarizing, the predicting, the clarifying. You're going to keep seeing that in all the units. They're sprinkled in.
Alisa Heenan
STARI Teacher
Leominster, MA
STARI's sequence of comprehension strategies instruction:
| UNIT 1 | UNIT 2 | UNIT 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CLARIFYING | strategy introduced | reinforced | reinforced |
| SUMMARIZING | strategy introduced | reinforced | reinforced |
| PREDICTING | strategy introduced | reinforced | |
| QUESTIONING | strategy introduced |
PARTNER READING
During partner reading, students:
- Silently read unit novels and nonfiction texts
- Pause after reading each small chunk of text to discuss what they read with a partner
- Use prompts in the student workbook to guide partner discussion
Partner reading supports reading development because:
- It serves as a scaffold between teacher-led guided reading and independent reading
- It gives every student more air time to discuss thoughts about the text
- It builds engagement and motivation
Related documents:
Peek into a STARI classroom:
Ms. Lewis’s 8th grade class engages in a partner reading lesson using the novel
Game by Walter Dean Myers. Ms. Lewis introduces the text, and then students read and discuss with a partner.
One thing I've grown to see be more successful as a result of working in STARI is thinking about the value of that peer partnership, and how when your students are really trusting each other in these discussions, they're opening up to each other, and they're coaching each other before we even come back together in the larger group. Instead of it being one of me to all of them, now they have all of these peer coaches that can guide them.
Ariadna Phillips-Santos
STARI Teacher, New York City
GUIDED/COMMUNAL READING
In guided/commual reading, students:
- All read the same complex, age-appropriate text
- Silently read short chunks of text
- Pause after each chunk to discuss questions posed by the teacher
- Respond to classmates’ ideas and perspectives
Guided/communal reading supports reading development because:
- Silent, independent reading builds students’ decoding, fluency, and comprehension skills
- Reading in small chunks, which increase in size over the course of the school year, builds students’ reading stamina
- Students receive support from the teacher in making sense of the text
- Students are supported in applying comprehension and decoding strategies while they read
- Hearing classmates’ perspectives leads to deeper understanding of what is read
Related documents:
Peek into a STARI classroom:
Ms. Phillps-Santos’ 8th grade class discusses the novel Game, by Walter Dean Myers, during a guided reading lesson.
As STARI teachers, we're facilitators of depth. We want to get our students to go beyond the basic understandings of the text.
Jen St Cyr
STARI Teacher
Leominster, MA
DEBATE
In debate in STARI, students:
- Engage in frequent mini-debates with a partner during fluency practice and partner reading
- Engage in at least one whole-class debate per unit
Debate supports reading development because:
- Debate offers a motivating context to craft an argument
- Forming an argument about a text is a crucial 21st-century skill
- Students practice making a claim and selecting the best evidence to support their claim
- Students evaluate (and often attempt to rebut) their peers’ arguments, an important skill in reading and in life
Related documents:
Peek into a STARI classroom:
Students in Ms. Hamilton’s 8th grade class present an argument about the text The Skin I’m In, by Sharon Flake.
Students in Ms. Hamilton’s 8th grade class engage in a debate about The Skin I’m In.
I like the STARI program a lot because I get to interact with a small group of people that either have the same viewpoint or a different viewpoint as me. I like talking to people with different viewpoints so we can debate, because I want to hear what they have to think about the book and how they think about it.
Kamani
8th Grade, New York City
