This article describes the Four-N-Framework for responding to readers through focused and intentional individualized dynamic formative feedback. Making ongoing informed data-driven instructional decisions and effective actionable feedback supports students' reading growth and fosters lifelong readers. This easy-to-implement process can support…

In this invited Viewpoint, Sharon Walpole tracks her thinking about feasible, effective, small-group differentiated instruction. She acknowledges political pressures and the focus on science of reading. She describes the attractiveness and feasibility of guided reading. She then identifies some salient criticisms of the assessments, texts, and…

Artificial intelligence is the simulation or development of reasoning and other human-like cognitive abilities by computers. Currently, there is limited exploration of applications of artificial intelligence tools for teaching reading to children in the early childhood and elementary grades, including how artificial intelligence might be used to…

This article examines findings from an umbrella review of 95 systematic reviews and meta-analyses on effective reading instruction. The analysis highlights that reading is a multifaceted process, requiring the integration of key components such as decoding, comprehension, fluency, and motivation. The review underscores the importance of early…

Reading comprehension is contingent upon the integration of various reading skills, including word reading, reading fluency, and comprehension strategies. Students who encounter challenges in both word reading and reading comprehension present an opportunity for growth across multiple reading-related domains. Recent intervention data, as…

Journey with a third-grade community of writers as they develop their writing identities and abilities in a responsive approach to writers' workshop. Instruction is framed around the writers' workshop approach, where students' choice and voice are centered within extended periods of time for writing, alongside daily mini-lessons addressing the…

The purpose of this article is to highlight the importance of providing reading interventions that are differentiated and aligned with an individual student's most foundational reading skill need. The authors present profiles of different readers and suggest three principal areas for support: decoding words, reading at an appropriate rate, and…

Patterns of reading difficulty provide an educationally useful way to think about different kinds of reading problems, whether those problems are mainly experiential in nature (e.g., those common among English learners) or associated with disabilities (e.g., those typical of children with dyslexia). This article reviews research on three common…

Early childhood educators are increasingly asked to support the alphabet knowledge development of children enrolled in their classrooms. Children in the same classroom, however, often show vastly different alphabet learning needs. Moreover, recent research suggests that some letters are more difficult to learn. These facts run counter to…

The authors examine the growth and impact of guided reading, small group teaching for differentiated instruction in reading that was stimulated by their early publications. Many changes in literacy education have been observed as a result--almost as if educators had a "romance" with guided reading and leveled books. While changes have been…

This article addresses approaches to differentiating instruction to meet the needs of students whose literacy needs, interests, and strengths vary widely. This article was designed to support classroom teachers who understand the importance of differentiating instruction, but are unsure of how best to design and implement differentiation within…

When schools and teachers adopt core reading programs they can use them with fidelity or make intelligent decisions about the texts, lessons and components they select to use. The evidence suggests that these programs are not research-based documents, but rather compromises between what the research suggests about effective reading instruction and…

Struggling readers need to be taught at their instruction level. But often, separating them from their classmates reinforces their feelings of inadequacy. This article will explain the importance of developing a sense of agency in struggling learners and outline some strategies teachers can incorporate to help make this happen within the classroom.

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…

The importance of digital and media literacies to literacy instruction and learning for today's elementary students is shared in this article. A student's routine literacy activities are documented to provide a view into how digital and media literacies are woven into a fourth-grade classroom. This example brings the use of technology as a tool to…