This longitudinal study examined the effectiveness of a progress monitoring method, namely the Multilayer Instruction Model-Progress Monitoring (MIM-PM), which is a word reading fluency measure. It was used from 1st grade onward to predict the overall reading achievement of students in elementary school by tracking their reading achievement over…

As caseloads for special education teachers continue to rise and as more students with disabilities enter the regular education setting (U.S. Department of Education, 2016), the need for co-teaching, in which a special education teacher and regular education teacher work together in one classroom to meet all students' needs, is significant.…

Even with extensive literacy research, routines, and policy modifications, many elementary students are not provided with the needed tools to develop independent literacy skills. Therefore, the purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine what independent literacy behaviors are developing in first through fourth grade students to…

Ambivalence is a relatively little advanced concept for studying young people's engagement in education. We present a case study in which a teacher of a kindergarten-first-grade classroom works within an activity called a "playworld" to engage a child who had been excluded from certain classroom practices, after having been perceived by…

This study examined the extent to which first grade teachers adapt their reading instruction to the literacy skills of particular children in their classroom, and investigated whether teacher and classroom characteristics influence such adaptation. Three hundred seven Finnish children were tested with regard to their literacy skills at the end of…

By providing sustained, embedded professional development over the course of a school year--as well as involving teachers in creating high-quality assessment tasks, implementing the assessments with students, and tying assessment directly to instruction--the authors increased the value that their teaching community places on mathematical…

This article relates the story of a first grade teacher and a child who was the only deaf student in the entire school. Because he had no one who could communicate with him--not teachers, not students, no one, this situation tugged at the hearts of a committed team of professionals. A teacher of the deaf, a first grade general education teacher, a…

This article describes how the everyday experiences of a 1st grader pushed a teacher to confront gender issues in the classroom. Broadening students' ideas of what was acceptable for boys and girls is an important first step. (Contains 3 resources.)

Collaborative teaching is an option worth exploring at the elementary school level. The problem is many teachers lack the knowledge to effectively make these co-teaching relationships work. The purpose of this study is to identify effective co-teaching strategies to enhance collaborative teaching relationships. The study documents 1st through 4th…

In classrooms tests, students are regularly required to demonstrate their understanding of mathematical concepts. When children encounter problems in demonstrating such understanding, it is often not clear whether this is because of the language of the teachers' questions and instructions or a genuine non-understanding of the concept itself. This…

The purpose of this study was to compare 1st-grade teachers' responses to professional development (PD) programs in reading that differed in means and degree of support for teachers' learning and efforts to improve their reading instruction. We compared 3 models of PD: the 1st model provided only seminars for the teachers, the 2nd model provided…

Literacy coaches provide job-embedded professional development for teachers, and the number of literacy coaches in elementary schools is increasing. Although literacy coaching offers promise in terms of improving teacher practice and student achievement, guidance is needed regarding the qualifications, activities, and roles of literacy coaches.…

This study attempted to provide a systematic framework for phonics instruction for beginning readers in literature-based classrooms based on relative frequency of phoneme-grapheme occurrences found in three distinct corpora. The first corpus contained an academic word list. The second corpus contained the running text from 363 books identified as…

In this article, the author explores the implementation of the K-3 Reading First initiative and its recommendation for scientifically based reading curricula. During a time of high-stakes testing and accountability, this policy has emphasized a skills-based approach to reading and placed importance on scripted teaching models. Using data from a…

Traditionally, assessing student writing ability has often been product-focused. Advocates of child-centered process-oriented classrooms, however, suggest that teachers should also focus on understanding children's writing behaviors in the context of meaningful communicative tasks. In such an approach, writing conferences are one way in which…