Purpose: Many children begin school with limited vocabularies, placing them at a high risk of academic difficulties. The goal of this study was to examine the effects of a vocabulary intervention program, Story Friends, designed to improve vocabulary knowledge of at-risk preschool children. Method: Twenty-four early-childhood classrooms were…

"Active learning" has been used to describe classrooms that have varied widely with respect to instructional topics, age of learners, and the procedures used to operationalize the general notion of the term. In most cases, the specific variant of active learning under investigation has been more effective than the particular control used…

Prior research found that without the naming cusp, children did not learn from instructional demonstrations presented before learn units (IDLUs) (i.e., modeling an expected response twice for a learner prior to delivering an instructional antecedent), however, following the establishment of naming, they could. The present study was designed to…

Kindergarten teachers face the challenge of balancing traditional developmental programming and contemporary academic standards. In classrooms following a play-based learning framework, academic content such as literacy is to be taught within children's play. However, educators have reported conceptual and practical challenges with integrating…

This 12-week mixed-methods study examined an 8th-grade English language arts curriculum designed to increase participants' (N = 62) reading comprehension and reading motivation. Data consisted of demographic information, pre/post standardized reading comprehension scores, reading motivation survey scores, and participants' periodic semistructured…

This study describes initial development, feasibility, and fidelity of implementation of a vocabulary and language curriculum supplement that combined explicit instruction and educational television programming to enhance children's vocabulary acquisition. Efficacy of an intervention relies in part on its fidelity of implementation, but little is…

After February 2014, teachers in Trinidad and Tobago were required to implement a new, integrated curriculum. The major considerations of the new curriculum were literacy and numeracy skills taught across the curriculum, assessment of learning, differentiated instruction, and the integration of Information Communication Technology (ICT). This…

This paper investigates Language models with an emphasis on an appraisal of the Competence Based Language Teaching Model (CBLT) employed in the teaching and learning of English language in Cameroon. Research endeavours at various levels combined with cumulative deficiencies experienced over the years have propelled educational policy makers to…

The alarming results of large studies such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP; National Center for Education Statistics, 2012) point to an urgent need for writing support and call for specific and effective methods to foster writing competencies. The main purpose of this paper is to describe an innovative peer-assisted…

Model-based instruction has been increasingly used in physical education for the past two decades. Metzler (2011) identified eight instructional models that are commonly used in physical education today. Each model is designed to promote certain kinds of learning outcomes for students and to address different combinations of the national…

This quasi-experimental, mixed model study explored the use of an instructional approach that provided direct instruction and experiences in multicultural education while empowering preservice teachers to examine their perspectives using a hybrid classroom format. The purpose of the study was to explore preservice teachers' attitudes and…

The need to improve math education around the country has been well documented, especially in urban school systems like Philadelphia. In Spring 2010, only 56.6% of students in Philadelphia Public schools scored proficient or advanced on the Pennsylvania State Standardized Assessment (PSSA). In Philadelphia Empowerment Schools, the 107 lowest…

In the targeted school in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, teachers focus on differentiating instruction with technology-based software. Differentiated instruction is the chosen teaching strategy over direct instruction because students and teachers alike prefer to work in cooperative groups while using technology in the classroom.…

This paper illustrates an approach for Direct Instruction (DI) practitioners and researchers for enhancing the value of DI implementations beyond that obtained through student test performance alone. The importance of such enhancements is based on perspectives from scale-up research linking intervention value with sustainability. In this study,…

In a three-part study we explored implications for enhancing the role of "Corrective Reading" ("CR") in systemic school reform relating to teacher judgments of the high levels of student academic performance required by "CR" tasks in contrast to inappropriate instructional perspectives applied by teachers regarding…