This report describes a study that examined changes in literacy engagement during one year of Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI), a new approach to teaching reading, writing, and science. Literacy engagement was defined as the integration of intrinsic motivations, cognitive strategies, and conceptual learning from text. To promote literacy engagement in classrooms, a team designed and implemented CORI in two third-grade and two fifth-grade classrooms in two schools. One hundred forty students participated in an integrated reading/language arts-science program, which emphasized "real world" science observations, student self-direction, strategy instruction, collaborative learning, self-expression, and coherence of literacy learning experiences. Trade books replaced basals and science textbooks. Based on 1-week performance assessments in the fall and spring, students gained in the following higher-order strategies: searching multiple texts, representing knowledge, transferring concepts, comprehending informational texts, representing knowledge, transferring concepts, comprehending informational text, and interpreting narrative. Children's intrinsic motivations for literacy correlated with cognitive strategies at both grade levels. All students who increased in intrinsic motivation also increased their use of higher-order strategies; and a sizeable proportion (50%) of students who were stable or decreased in intrinsic motivation failed to progress in higher-order strategies. Findings suggest that literacy engagement increased during the year. (Contains 62 references and 4 tables of data. The Performance Assessment of Literacy Engagement and 2 rubrics are attached.) (Author/RS)