Sufficient reading competence and digital skills are among the eight key competences for lifelong learning identified by the Council of European Union European (European Commission. Directorate General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture., 2019). These competences are fundamental for individuals to achieve personal fulfilment, maintain a healthy and sustainable lifestyle, enhance employability, and foster active citizenship and social inclusion (European Commission. Directorate General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture., 2019) .
Reading lessons seem to promote discrepancy in reading skills rather than closing the gap between high and low achieving readers. Declining reading skills (Schmich et al., 2023) and rapid digital transformation (European Commission. Joint Research Centre., 2024), call for innovative and inclusive approaches to promote reading skills within a digital learning environment.
Teachers´ digital expertise is essential for systematically integrating digital tools in schools (Timotheou et al., 2023) in order to enable teachers to enrich their lessons. It is important to use digital tools in a targeted and planned way within the classroom and to implement new teaching and learning opportunities (Remache Carrillo et al., 2019). Particularly, studies have shown that while digital tools alone may not guarantee improved reading skills and desired positive results (Delgado et al., 2015), the targeted and planned use of digital tools is fundamental, highlighting the importance of instruction. How digital tools are used within the classroom influences the (positive) development of the students literacy competences (European Commission. Joint Research Centre., 2024). Innovative technological applications combined with integrated literacy interventions and professional development do have great potential of reading promotion (Cheung & Slavin, 2011). Furthermore, digital media ease differentiation (Seifert, 2020).
The alignment between students' reading skills and the reading material plays an essential role in reading lessons (Paleczek et al., 2020). Reading materials that align with students´ reading competence not only promote their competence, but they also are a realizable way to meet the diverse needs of students (Gaitas et al., 2024) and allow students to work on the same topic, but on different reading levels (Seifert et al., 2016). Inspired by (1) former successful projects (Project X: authors, 2022; Project Y: authors, 2022) and (2) a needs assessment concerning differentiated reading practices in Austrian classrooms underscored the necessity of differentiated materials to address the variety of reading levels of students within inclusive learning environments.
Therefore, our goal was to develop differentiated materials that leverage digitalization, automation, and consistent student routines to reduce teachers’ workload. This approach allows teachers to dedicate more time to supporting children who need additional assistance and individualized attention, while still promoting independent work among the majority of students. The designed digital reading materials contain elements that promote reading, such as working with glossary words and a specific vocabulary (Schabmann et al., 2012), cooperative learning methods (Remache Carrillo et al., 2019), reading strategies (Philipp, 2015) and reading while listening (RWL) to audio files (Walter, 2018).
Within a digital learning environment, the materials combine qualitative (varying complexity of words and sentence structure) and quantitative (varying word-/ sentence-/ text-length) differentiation while always focusing on the same topic. We created the reading materials for three slightly differing intervention groups, focussing on (a) reading strategies, (b) vocabulary work through glossaries, and (c) reading while listening. We pose following research question:
-    What opportunities and challenges have arisen from the implementation of the digitally differentiated material in the three intervention groups?

The study uses a mixed-method approach to evaluate a differentiated digital intervention for Grade 3 students in Austrian primary schools, taking place between November 2024 and February 2025. The intervention focuses on the concept of differentiated digital reading material and enriching elements to foster reading comprehensions and digital participation through a digital learning environment. The intervention is implemented as a quasi-experimental design, with an intervention group (N=708) and a control group (N=198). The intervention group is divided into thirds. Each subgroup of the intervention group receives the differentiated digital reading material with a different approach to foster reading. One subgroup (n=225) receives tasks promoting reading strategies. The second subgroup (n=220) receives tasks focussing glossary words. The third subgroup (n=259) receives additional audio files to support students with low reading skills. All groups include gamification playful elements and a glossary within the digital learning environment. A pre-post-design, using the standardized assessment GraLeV (Paleczek et al., 2023) will evaluate reading comprehension outcomes. The participating teachers (N=39) attended teacher training (2 afternoons) to be able to use the differentiated digital material in their classrooms. Classroom observations (N=36) are currently being conducted to analyse student engagement and teacher implementation. The observation form was piloted before involving three observation sessions, each conducted with two raters. The interrater reliability was calculated using Cohen’s kappa, yielding a coefficient of 0.806. This result represents a substantial agreement between the raters. The observation form includes eleven foci: (1) general classroom conditions of the lesson, (2) instructional behaviour of the teacher, (3) behaviour of the students, (4) interactions of the teacher and pupils, (5) conception of the digital material, (6) working behaviour of the students, (7) technical problems, (8) cooperative tasks, (9) vocabulary work, (10) strategies and (11) audio files. To gain further insights, questionnaires and interviews with students and teachers will be conducted. The questionnaire for students´ experiences with the digital learning materials will be conducted digitally and focuses on five areas: (1) socio-economic background, (2) reading self-concept, (3) reading motivation, (4) digital equipment, (5) digital differentiated reading material. The questions have the following formats: Likert scale (strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, strongly disagree) (e.g., “I prefer to read texts that are on a tablet.”), multiple answers (e.g., “Do you own one of these devices?”) and single answers (e.g., “How often are you read aloud to at home?”).

The study aims to provide insight into the usability and implementation of digital materials for inclusive reading lessons. On one hand, we want to define digital elements that enable the implementation of differentiated digital materials and thus make materials suitable for practical use. The aim is to identify barriers that make it difficult but also to demonstrate effective practical approaches used by teachers in inclusive classrooms. On the other hand, we want to gain insights into which digital elements pupils prefer working with digital reading material. Therefore, this paper will share preliminary findings from interviews and observations, shedding light on the opportunities and challenges encountered in inclusive lessons with diverse reading abilities. It will provide an in-depth exploration of differentiated and individualized learning strategies, offering initial insights into how the material's elements can support both differentiation and individualization in inclusive (reading) lessons within a digital environment.

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