According to the 2006 Program for International Assessment (PISA), the United States is behind their international counterparts in the areas of mathematics and science. (Darling-Hammond, 2010). The Unites States is at a critical point in developing future leaders in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. In preparing students for a…

Children's social interactions with their peers influence their psychosocial adjustment; consequently, the relationship between class-wide peer liking, same-gender peer liking, and school adjustment was explored in two age groups. Peer liking was analysed using the social relations model (SRM). In Study 1, 205 children (103 female and 102 male,…

Comorbidity between SLI and dyslexia is well documented. Researchers have variously argued that dyslexia is a separate disorder from SLI, or that children with dyslexia show a subset of the difficulties shown in SLI. This study examines these hypotheses by assessing whether family history of dyslexia and speech and language difficulties are…

Curriculum-based measurement of oral reading (CBM-R) is often used to benchmark growth in the fall, winter, and spring. CBM-R is also used to set goals and monitor student progress between benchmarking occasions. The results of previous research establish an expectation that weekly growth on CBM-R tasks is consistently linear throughout the…

This study describes a second-grade science curriculum designed to individualize student instruction (ISI-Science) so that students, regardless of initial science and literacy skills, gain science knowledge and reading skills. ISI-Science relies on the 5-E Learning Cycle as a framework and incorporates flexible, homogeneous, literacy skills-based…

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…

In two experiments we examined how children's nonword pronunciations are influenced by learning words. In Experiment 1, children pronounced nonwords before and after learning words sharing orthographic rimes with the nonwords. These rimes varied in spelling-to-sound consistency and regularity. Children's nonword pronunciations were more sensitive…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between measures of written vocabulary and writing quality. Participants included 92 second-grade students and 101 fourth-grade students. Students completed two writing samples: one an experimenter-developed writing task and the other, a standardized assessment of writing quality. Research…

Differentiated instruction is commonly believed to be critical to improving the quality and efficiency of teachers' instructional repertoires (Fischer & Rose, 2001; Tomlinson, 2004). Tomlinson (2000) describes differentiation in four domains: content, process, product, and learning environment. Content differentiation involves varying…

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…

In the beginning of the first decade of this century, some highly-publicized extremistic acts of terror occurred. A hostage tragedy in a school in Beslan (North Ossetia) was followed in the Netherlands by the brutal murder of the controversial Dutch filmmaker and newspaper columnist Theo van Gogh, bomb attacks in Bali and Madrid and other acts of…

This paper reports the results of a descriptive study on the use of a technology-enhanced formative assessment system called Accelerated Math (AM) for ELLs and their native-English-speaking (NES) peers. It was comprised of analyses of an extant database of 18,549 students, including 2,057 ELLs, from grades 1 through 8 across 30 U.S. states. These…

Reading aloud is a common practice in primary classrooms and is viewed as an important vehicle for vocabulary development. Research indicates that interactive read-aloud styles and adult mediation of word learning are effective in enhancing word learning, but less is known about the actual practices of primary teachers. Read-alouds are complex…