Strategic Adolescent Reading Intervention (STARI)
STARI is Reorganized, Updated, and Expanded!
STARI, our reading intervention program, is a literature-focused, Tier II intervention for students in grades 6-9 who read two or more years below grade level.
Using research-based practices and highly engaging texts, STARI addresses gaps in fluency, decoding, reading stamina, and comprehension, aiming to move struggling students to higher levels of proficiency at the end of one year. STARI actively engages students in discussions of cognitively challenging content aligned to the Common Core and other 21st century standards. Although STARI includes some instruction in decoding, it does not offer sufficient phonics support for students reading below a second grade level.
The STARI Literacy Strategy:
- Adolescent struggling readers need to work on both basic reading skills and the skills that underlie deep comprehension: academic language, perspective-taking, and critical reading.
- Texts need to engage students with issues in their lives and in the world.
- Peer talk about text can develop reading engagement, perspective-taking, and critical reading.
Our Reading Intervention Program Includes:

- Nine units that connect to a full-length novel and a selection of poetry, short stories, and/or nonfiction;
- Texts that vary in genre and complexity and expose students to realistic reading demands for secondary school;
- Debate(s) related to the unit’s guiding question;
- Comprehension and decoding workbooks that guide partner work; and
- Daily lesson plans that help teachers deliver effective mini-lessons and lead guided reading discussion.

More about STARI
By the time students reach the middle grades, they are expected to read to learn instead of to learn to read.
But for the significant number of students who can’t decode or fluently read more complex text, this shift spells trouble. In addition, older students (Grades 6-9), who need targeted, intensive reading instruction are still adolescent thinkers! They do not find typical remedial materials engaging.
View this video to learn how SERP tackled this problem by creating STARI.
Hear from STARI Teachers and Students
Students in New York City talk about how STARI has helped them.
STARI teacher Cheri McKenzie shares what she likes about STARI.
Students in a suburban school district talk about reading and STARI.
STARI teacher Mike Andrews explains the need that STARI meets.
In this video, teachers and students in New York City explain how STARI has produced breakthroughs. Teachers find that the students are engaged with the materials, and that drives deeper comprehension and growth in decoding and fluency. Students report that they think differently about reading since participating in STARI.
Hear from Dr. Lowry Hemphill
STARI's Research and Development Lead
Dr. Hemphill explains how STARI can promote independence among students who feel demoralized about reading and about school in general.
Development of STARI was led by Lowry Hemphill (Wheelock College) through a SERP collaboration with Harvard University and four Massachusetts school districts. The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305F100026 to the Strategic Education Research Partnership as part of the Reading for Understanding Research Initiative. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.
The STARI Team
The STARI Team
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.