Teacher judgments of students' reading abilities in the elementary grades have been researched extensively, but less is known about how middle school teachers judge their students' word reading, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension skills. Such information could be useful when determining which students and reading components would be reasonable…

Facility with learning from multiple text documents is critical for college and career readiness. However, children with reading difficulties and disabilities have been largely excluded from research on multiple document comprehension. Accordingly, little is known about how children with reading difficulties and disabilities perform on…

Analyzing constructed responses, such as think-alouds or self-explanations, can reveal valuable information about readers' comprehension strategies. The current study expands on the extant work by (1) investigating combinations and patterns of comprehension strategies that readers use and (2) examining the extent to which these patterns relate to…

Analyzing constructed responses, such as think-alouds or self-explanations, can reveal valuable information about readers' comprehension strategies. The current study expands on the extant work by (1) investigating combinations and patterns of comprehension strategies that readers use and (2) examining the extent to which these patterns relate to…

Literacy assessment is essential for effective literacy instruction and training. However, traditional paper-based literacy assessments are typically decontextualized and may cause stress and anxiety for test takers. In contrast, serious games and game environments allow for the assessment of literacy in more authentic and engaging ways, which has…

To address the needs of a diverse group of students with reading difficulties, a majority of researchers over the last decade have designed and implemented multicomponent reading interventions (MCRIs) that provide instruction in multiple areas of reading yielding mixed results. The current study evaluates whether students' baseline word reading…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the kindergarten, first-, and second-grade predictors of reading comprehension in bilingual children. Specifically, we evaluated the role that Spanish and English skills play in predicting English reading comprehension in third grade. Method: As part of a longitudinal study, 248 bilingual children…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd-grade predictors of reading comprehension in bilingual children. Specifically, we evaluated the role that Spanish and English skills play in predicting English reading comprehension in 3rd grade. Method: As part of a longitudinal study, 248 bilingual children were…

Automaticity in word recognition has been hypothesized to be important in reading development (LaBerge & Samuels, 1974; Perfetti, 1985). However, when predicting educational outcomes, it is difficult to isolate the influence of automatic word recognition from factors such as processing speed or knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences.…

Inadequate responders demonstrate significant risk for learning disabilities. Previous investigations of the cognitive profiles of inadequate and adequate responders have not included measures of executive functions (EFs), which have well-documented associations to reading comprehension. We evaluated EF performance on a common factor comprised of…

Cognitive predictors of reading are well known, but less is understood about the roles of "noncognitive" factors, including emotional variables such as anxiety. While "math" anxiety has been a focus of study, its analogue in the reading literature is understudied. We assessed struggling fourth and fifth graders (n = 272) on…

This study examines the initial word reading performance of fourth-grade struggling readers and the extent to which differing levels of word reading performance at pretest influenced their response to reading interventions. A large group of students with significant reading comprehension difficulties (N = 481) were classified into three clusters…

Test-taker characteristics (TTCs), or individual difference variables, are known to be a systematic source of variance in language test performance. Although previous research has documented the impact of a range of TTCs on second language (L2) learners' test performance, few of these studies have involved young learners. Given that young L2…

This paper introduces a new observation system that is designed to investigate students' and teachers' talk during literacy instruction, "Creating Opportunities to Learn from Text" (COLT). Using video-recorded observations of 2nd-3rd grade literacy instruction (N = 51 classrooms, 337 students, 151 observations), we found that nine types…

An emerging body of research has evaluated the role of growth mindset in educational achievement, yet little work has focused on the unique role of mindset to standardized reading outcomes. Our study presents four key outcomes in a sample of 195 fourth-grade students. First, we evaluated the dimensionality of general and reading-specific mindset…