Strong foundational reading skills empower students to succeed both within and beyond the classroom. This Spotlight will help readers identify how much time should be spent teaching foundational reading skills; review how reading aloud to students can be a critical tool for developing literacy; investigate how teachers can support older students…

In this study, we randomly assigned struggling readers in special needs education (n = 23; 8-12 years of age) to a dog-assisted reading intervention or a similar intervention without a dog present. Students participated in 30-minute reading sessions twice a week for a total of six weeks. Using two standardised tests we measured reading skills…

Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) show a wide range of impairments, including poor pre-reading skills and decoding difficulties due to phonological deficits and such difficulties have significant repercussions on the acquisition of written language. However, evidence about reading processes and development is mainly available for…

Research has been conducted on the science of reading and how students learn to read. This knowledge has not increased reading achievement in middle school. Reading scores in grades 6-8 across America are declining. The gap for students with disabilities is widening. Luhmann's Systems Theory provided a framework for understanding an organization…

The current study aimed to examine performance times during text reading and question answering of students with and without a history of reading difficulties. Forty-three university students with a history of reading difficulties (HRD) were compared to 124 university students without a history of reading difficulties on measures of word and…

In this study, the authors used the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 to examine the instructional time allocation and instructional practices in eighth-grade English language arts classes for struggling readers, as measured by track level. The authors also analyze the titles and text complexity of the last three…

Research on this intervention program aimed to address whether digital technology (i.e., apps on tablets) contributes to struggling early readers' (4-6 years old) on-task behavior and level of engagement while learning prerequisite emergent literacy skills (e.g., phonemic awareness, phonics, word recognition and decoding). The research also…

The purpose of this study was to compare the reading skills of the fourth graders who were poor readers in different text genres (story and informative text). Fifty-six fourth-grade students who were poor readers participated in this study. Reading rates, reading errors and reading prosody characteristics of the students were examined in the…

For many students at risk of reading difficulties, effective, early reading instruction can improve reading outcomes and set them on a positive reading trajectory. Thus, response-to-intervention models include a focus on a student's Tier I reading instruction as one element for preventing reading difficulties and identifying students with a…

The purpose of this study was to examine the amount of time spent actively engaged in reading sounds, words, and connected text for students at-risk for reading difficulties in the first formal grade of reading instruction, kindergarten. Observational data of 109 kindergarten students at high-risk for later reading difficulties were collected…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of story mapping on the reading comprehension scores, on-task behaviors, and attitudes of third- -grade students (N = 6) with ADHD. Students' reading grade equivalencies were assessed before and after the study. The teacher-researcher compared two other achievement measures before and during…

The aims of this study were to analyze the relationship between dyslexia and eye movements and to assess whether this method can be added to the workup of dyslexic patients. The sample was comprised of 11 children with a diagnosis of dyslexia and 11 normal between 8 and 13 years of age. All subjects underwent orthoptic evaluation, ophthalmological…

Direct vocabulary instruction is 1 critical component of reading instruction. Although most students in the elementary grades need to continue building their vocabulary knowledge, students with reading difficulties are at the greatest risk of falling further behind each year in vocabulary and concept knowledge without effective instruction. This…

Children who are significantly inattentive and poor early readers require intervention, and traditional tutoring approaches may not be effective with this group. Using a single-subject, multiple-baseline-across-participants design, Study 1 examines whether a computer-assisted reading intervention increases performance for three first-grade…

An alternating treatments design was used to compare the effects of two reading fluency interventions on the oral reading fluency and maze accuracy of four fourth-grade students. Also, by taking into account time spent in intervention, the efficiency of the two interventions was compared. In the adult-mediated repeated reading (RR) condition,…