Due to unfavorable results in the first PISA-cycle (Ertl, 2006) massive financial resources were invested towards the construction and development of all-day schools in Germany. Since then the number of all-day primary schools in Germany has quintupled and in 2017 almost two thirds of the primary schools in Germany were all-day schools (KMK 2006, 2018). Central objectives of this educational reform are enhancing students’ achievement and reducing unequal educational chances. Central goals of all-day schooling are to enhance students’ achievement and to reduce inequality of educational opportunities (KMK, 2015).

Reading literacy is a key competence for schools to be successful and an essential condition for participating in society (Bremerich-Vos, Tarelli & Valtin, 2012). At the end of primary school education one out of seven students in Germany does not have sufficient reading literacy skills. Furthermore, reading achievement is connected to gender, social and emigrational background (Tarelli et al., 2012). According to Artelt et al. (2007) schools are primary places for knowledge transfer and therefore play a decisive role in supporting children’s development of reading literacy. This applies even more so for all-day schools.

However, previous studies in German all-day schools have shown no effects of participation in reading related extracurricular activities regarding the development of reading literacy (Tillmann et al., 2017). At the same time, findings indicate selective participation in reading related activities: girls and students with higher achievement in reading are up to five times more likely to attend reading-related activities (Rollett et al., in press).

To date only few findings are available from German-speaking countries on effects of participation in reading related extracurricular learning arrangements on reading achievement as well as on questions concerning selectivity of participation. Schüpbach (2014) reports that primary school students in Switzerland who took part in extracurricular learning arrangements show a higher increase in reading achievement compared to students with no participation. Though Fischer et al. (2016) and Sauerwein (2016) found no general effect of attending reading related activities for students in secondary schools, they figured out that students’ development of reading achievement was better when students participated voluntarily.

This paper reports findings of the intervention study “StEG-reading”. In this study, we developed and implemented an extracurricular activity ‘Investigators Club’ for all-day schools to promote students’ reading literacy. It is based on scientific findings on effective support of reading literacy and focuses on cognitive reading strategies (Philipp, 2015) and reading motivation (Schiefele, U., Schaffner, E., Möller, J. & Wigfi eld, A., 2012).

Research questions

1. Does participating in the ‘Investigators Club’ effect the development of reading comprehension?
2. Does participating in the ‘Investigators Club’ promote students‘ reading motivation and enjoyment?
3. Do students with lower baseline reading scores and immigration backgrounds benefit from taking part in the ‘Investigators Club’ even more?

To examine the effect of participating in the ‘Investigators Club’, we surveyed 1.900 fourth-grade students within 22 German all-day primary schools in two cohorts in two different school years in a crossover trial to be able to compare the development of reading comprehension of participants (n ≈ 350) and non-participants. All students were surveyed at two points of measurement in a pre-/post-intervention and waiting-control group design by reading tests and questionnaires. Two different reading tests were conducted. First, a curriculum-based test for reading comprehension was presented to the students within the questionnaire at the beginning and at the end of the examined first school term in fourth grade. Second, we used the results of the nationwide standardized VERA tests on reading competences in the second term of third grade. To describe the development of these competences we tested the students again using more difficult tasks from the VERA task-pool in the second term of fourth grade. To include individual and school-related conditions, we also examined the students’ parents, teachers, the additional staff and the schools’ principles.

We are currently analyzing our cross-sectional data, longitudinal analysis will be finished in time for the conference. Here we will analyze the impact of participation in the ‘Investigators Club’ on the development of reading comprehension, motivation and enjoyment based on data of two points of measurement. Finally, we will adopt a differential perspective and investigate to what extend students with lower baseline reading competencies and immigration backgrounds particularly benefit from their participation. We expect that students who took part in the reading activity show more positive development in reading comprehension and reading motivation than students who did not participate. At the same time, we expect to identify larger effects for students with lower scores in reading comprehension and less reading motivation. This would indicate that the developed extracurricular activity to promote students reading literacy has a remedial function.

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