In a sea of troubling reports about education, teaching, reading, and the well-being of teens, Ivey and Johnston bring some good news that shows what happens when we stop underestimating young people. This accessible book offers an engaging account of a 4-year study of adolescents who went from reluctant to enthusiastic readers. These youth…

The author invited two teachers affiliated with their graduate program in literacy to explore how children's social identities impacted students' reading process. The teachers, Taylor and Dana, worked in urban elementary charter schools in New York City, at the time. The participants agreed to share samples from their classrooms to illustrate how…

Because standardized tests in science are not given to PreK-3 students in Ohio, this report examined the longitudinal effects of learning from a teacher who had participated in the NURTURES professional development program. Specifically, it looked at the effects on students' mathematics and reading learning in grades 2-5 and science learning in…

In Australia, a substantial proportion of students start secondary school with literacy and numeracy skills that are 3 or more years below those of their peers. Evidence suggests that low literacy and numeracy skills hinder students' access to the curriculum and can result in poor progress or educational failure. These students are also more…

In this article, the authors describe some recent research on Readers Theater in the elementary classroom that examined gender differences and achievement. In one particular study, boys who participated in Readers Theater significantly outperformed their peers in reading comprehension. Elementary school boys reported enjoying Readers Theater…

This paper explores an inhuman reading of 'hands' with/in visual images of a Finnish literacy lesson. Inspired by Karen Barad's agential realism and the ontological turn, we disrupt a metaphysics of presence, the temporality of progress and binary logic, to reconfigure the child in literacy practices as a sympoietic phenomenon, always already…

For many teachers, the term "scaffolding" has come to mean providing just the right amount of help when a student encounters difficulty. However, there is another facet of scaffolding that has been largely ignored, and that is making decisions about what to focus on to help the student. In this article, new research findings are shared…

This essay challenges whether or not the use of district money for Reading Recovery© (RR) instruction is an effective expenditure of funds that results in sustained improvement in student reading outcomes. As a Tier 3 intervention, RR provides expensive, one-on-one tutoring for first- and second-grade readers that is occupying an increasingly…

In February 2016, the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) pulled together stakeholders from across the state and set an ambitious goal--that at least 75 percent of third graders would be proficient readers by 2025. The goal originated from both stagnant third grade reading scores in the state and national research indicating that third grade…

Following the recommendations of a 2013 instructional audit, the Academically or Intellectually Gifted department implemented a co-teaching instructional strategy in 41 volunteer schools starting in the 2014-15 school year. Implementation data and discussions with central office staff suggest that while implementation fidelity was relatively…

Aka (2019) conducted an year-long large-scale study demonstrating that Japanese high school students who undertook extensive reading performed better than a control group who undertook grammatical instruction. Those showing the greatest gains were those of lower and intermediate proficiency. The students' achievement was measured in terms of…

This paper presents an evaluation of two reading methods, phonics-based instruction and whole language learning, for English Language Learners (ELLs) and discusses the learning theories, behaviorism and constructivism that are associated with each method, respectively. The study took place in a K-12 international school, with 110 Grade 1 subjects…

How can middle-level educators improve reading achievement when digitized texts and tests manage their instruction? Experienced Osage Middle School reading teachers and school administrators addressed this question as they examined their Istation reading curriculum, and higher education faculty partners were invited to portray this work. Teaching…

Languages differ in the way that speech and meaning are represented in written form: in English, the correspondences are variable. Thus, in learning to read in English there is need for an approach that combines alphabetic decoding and a mastery of sight vocabulary. Teaching children to read should develop from an analysis of the skills and…

For many ESL/EFL learners, reading is their main learning goal and may be the most important of the four language skills in the second language. For many ESL/EFL teachers, the issue of promoting proficient reading is important, and they look for additional or alternative methods to achieve this goal. However, when discussing reading as a primary…