The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to determine the extent to which preservice teachers could identify various academic language markers (general academic and discipline-specific vocabulary, passive voice, nominalization, logical connections, and referents--pronouns and synonyms) in complex texts and describe the language that make texts…

This qualitative case study explores the processes that occurred when pre-service teachers in an undergraduate elementary education literacy methods course were asked to interact with contextually challenging texts in a comprehension module and implement comprehension instruction in a tutoring field experience placement. The goal was to understand…

We compared year-long gains in fluency and comprehension in grades 3-5 in 3 treatment and 4 comparison schools. Treatment schools implemented a comprehensive school reform (CSR) program called Bookworms. The program employed challenging text and emphasized high text volume, aggressive vocabulary and knowledge building, and contextualized strategy…

Since Emmett Betts first devised a framework of independent, instructional, and frustration reading levels in the 1940s, these levels have played a large role in classroom assessment and instruction. It is important for teachers to have a deep understanding of the research that supports the reading level framework. This article identifies four key…

Common Core Reading Standard 10 not only prescribes the difficulty of texts students should become able to read, but also the difficulty diet of texts schools should ask their students to read across the school year. The use of quantitative text-assessment tools in the implementation of this standard warrants an examination into the validity of…

Although they are valid and reliable, one-minute fluency measures are defining and capturing a reduced view of fluency as simply accuracy and rate in oral reading. Thus, they may lead astray our understanding of struggling readers' reading fluency development and instructional needs. Fluency is a complicated construct. The author discusses a…

Texts are stated to have an important role in Turkish language education relevant to the goals stated in the Primary Schools Turkish Lesson Teaching Program and Guide (2006), and in the formation and improvement of the individual's reading culture. The aim of the study is to determine the comprehensibility levels of the texts in the Turkish…

As shown by MetLife's 2010 "Survey of the American Teacher," America's educators strongly believe that all students should graduate from high school ready for college and a career (85 percent). Additionally, according to MetLife's 2009 survey, 86 percent of teachers believe that setting high expectations for students will improve student…

The relationship of reading performance to difficulty level of material was the focus of this study. Participants in the study were 83 fourth graders from four urban schools. Each student was administered passages at different levels of challenge (independent, instructional, frustration) based on word identification accuracy. Passages were scored…

Results of an informal experiment conducted with five seven-year-olds and three nine-year-olds suggest that being able to infer well from a piece of reading material does not necessarily prevent children from making mistakes at the level of literal comprehension. (GT)

Five elementary level males with learning disabilities read material at two levels of difficulty in a multi-element design. Findings suggested that oral reading rate and reading comprehension performance are more strongly linked than previously suggested. (CL)

This paper analyzes the order in which subject, verb, and quote come in sentences in the children's stories about Babar by Jean and Laurent de Brunhoff. It suggests that different constructions have different functions that are exploited by the author for communicative purposes. The paper adds that the order in which these elements appear affects…

Examined the ability of students at different achievement levels to understand worksheet directions and accurately identify the reasons for completing worksheets. The cognitive processes that students employed when they read directions were also examined. (PCB)

This study assessed the effects of curriculum on technical features (criterion validity and developmental growth rates) within curriculum-based measurement in reading with 91 elementary level handicapped and nonhandicapped students. Correlations between oral reading samples and reading comprehension as well as developmental growth rates were…