Grounded in a strong evidence base, this indispensable text and practitioner guide has given thousands of teachers tools to support the literacy growth of beginning and struggling readers in grades K-2. The interactive strategies approach (ISA) is organized around core instructional goals related to enhancing word learning and comprehension of…

Through the presentation of two bilingual reader profiles, this article will illustrate how miscue analysis can act as a culturally relevant assessment tool as it allows for the study of reading across different spoken and written languages. The research presented in this article integrates a socio-psycholinguistic perspective to reading and a…

In recent years, the Education for All movement has focused more intensely on the quality of education, rather than simply provision. Many recent and current education quality interventions focus on literacy, which is the core skill required for further academic success. Despite this focus on the quality of literacy instruction in developing…

In this study, the authors explore a newly constructed dynamic assessment (DA) intended to tap inference-making skills that they hypothesize will be predictive of future comprehension performance. The authors administered the test to 100 second-grade children using a dynamic format to consider the concurrent validity of the measure. The dynamic…

"Reading Mastery" is designed to provide explicit reading instruction to students in grades pre-K-5. One of several Direct Instruction curricula from McGraw-Hill, "Reading Mastery" is available in two versions: (1) "Reading Mastery Classic" (for grades pre-K-2) aims to help beginning readers identify letter sounds,…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine whether different measures of oral reading fluency relate differentially to reading comprehension performance in two samples of second-grade students: (a) students who evidenced difficulties with nonsense-word oral reading fluency, real-word oral reading fluency, and oral reading fluency of…

The purpose of this study was to examine the construct and predictive validity of a dynamic assessment (DA) of decoding learning. Students (N = 318) were assessed in the fall of first grade on an array of instruments that were given in hopes of forecasting responsiveness to reading instruction. These instruments included DA as well as…

We empirically examined the effect of reading comprehension on passage fluency in English and Spanish in the context of Cummins interdependence hypothesis (1979) and Perfetti's blueprint of the General Components of Reading (1999). Participants were 96 second-grade English learners being taught to read in Spanish and English. Measures in both…

As schools implement response to intervention to identify and serve students with learning difficulties, it is critical for educators to know how to evaluate screening measures. In the present study, "Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills" Oral Reading Fluency was used to compare the differential decisions that might occur in…

The current study examined the quality of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) across a sample of second-grade English Language (EL) learners with varying degrees of English proficiency (e.g., students with beginning, early intermediate, intermediate, early advanced, and advanced levels). DIBELS Oral Reading Fluency…

We examined student-, classroom-, and school-level effects in predicting second-grade Spanish-speaking children's oral reading fluency in Spanish. Teachers in 67 randomly selected urban schools administered the Tejas LEE to 1,537 first- and second-grade students. Oral reading fluency was measured in the passages students read for comprehension.…

This study combined both qualitative and quantitative research to determine the impact of instructional practices on comprehension improvement in second grade Guided Reading groups. Four second grade teachers and their 73 students ages seven through eight years old participated in this study. Additionally, the study examined the effects of Guided…

Improving reading rate can be difficult for poor readers. In this experiment, we investigated the impact of improvement in reading rate on other aspects of reading, including word recognition, decoding, vocabulary, and comprehension. Poor readers in Grades 2 or 4 (N = 123) were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions: practice reading text at their…

A significant body of research exists on the development of early literacy skills and their relationship to the development of literacy as a whole. Phonological awareness, orthographic processing, rapid automatized naming, phonological memory, and receptive vocabulary have all been shown to be predictive of early reading outcome measures. What is…

The current study will examine possible contextual effects relative to differences in reading comprehension performance in the state of Florida. While the Reading First (RF) Impact study examined such difference using a regression discontinuity design, the authors are primarily interested in other analytic methods that might answer different…