Researchers conducted an observation study to explore the instructional practices of special education teachers (N = 20) responsible for teaching reading to students with learning disabilities in Grades 4 and 5. With this study, researchers addressed gaps in previous related literature and improved understanding of how teachers spend their time…

Due to the Common Core State Standards, close reading is becoming a common practice in today's elementary and middle school classrooms. Qualitative content analysis of journal publications was used to determine the (a) prevalence of close reading in the existing literature, (b) knowledge about close reading from the research literature, (c) themes…

Adaptive teaching is considered a cornerstone of effective literacy teaching. Research has explored this dynamic aspect of classroom instruction and has found that given recent educational reform efforts implementing adaptive teaching during reading instruction has been particularly difficult. This study examined a yearlong inquiry of teacher…

Based on a three-year project conducted in Australian secondary schools, this paper captures a developing disenchantment with reading in and for subject English. As part of an extended professional learning experience for teachers, students and their English teachers were interviewed and students were asked to draw reading. Paying attention to the…

This systematic review examines the effects of summarizing and main idea interventions on the reading comprehension outcomes of struggling readers in Grades 3 through 12. A comprehensive search identified 30 studies published in peer-reviewed journals between 1978 and 2016. Studies included struggling reader participants in Grades 3 through 12;…

This study explores the effects of a Spanish vocabulary intervention on the literacy outcomes of students at risk for vocabulary difficulties in Chile. We screened 2nd-grade students (N = 84) with a standardized Spanish vocabulary measure. We then randomly assigned students who scored below the 40th percentile (n = 30) to an intervention or…

Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS) aims to provide language learners with considerable amount of comprehensible input through stories for language and literacy development. Although it has already demonstrated high potential with adolescent and adult learners of English, its implementation within the context of very young…

Research Findings: This study examined how teacher--child conversations unfold during shared book reading in Head Start classrooms as well as the relations between that talk and children's vocabulary learning. Book reading experiences in 27 Head Start classrooms were videotaped and coded for teacher talk, child responses, teacher follow-up…

Fingerspelling and its relationship with literacy skills among deaf and hard of hearing children who use American Sign Language is an increasingly popular research topic. However, there is limited research on whether reading interventions that systematically include fingerspelling are more effective for improving literacy skills than reading…

Clinical Question: Do preschool and kindergarten teachers (P) who participate in professional development programs that focus on emergent literacy skills with builtin individualized coaching (I) compared to those who do not participate in professional development programs (C) show enhanced knowledge and/or practice in the classroom environment…

This dissertation focuses on a study of reading-into-writing strategies employed by students in two sections of first-year-composition (FYC) that were paired with a support course as part of an accelerated learning program (ALP) at a community college. Each FYC course was comprised of 11 students whom the college had deemed college-ready without…

Packed with easy-to-use tools and resources, this book presents intensive intervention strategies for K-5 students with severe and persistent reading difficulties. Filling a key need, the authors describe specific ways to further intensify instruction when students continue to struggle. Chapters address all the fundamental components of…

Many details in reading curricula (e.g., the order of materials) have analogs in laboratory studies of learning (e.g., blocking/interleaving). Principles of learning from cognitive science could be used to structure these materials to optimize learning, but they are not commonly applied. Recent work bridges this gap by "field testing"…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the use of active learning in classroom instruction and student achievement, and to ascertain whether this relationship is influenced by classroom discipline problems. Is it the case that the more a teacher utilizes active learning strategies in the classroom, the more her…

The three target articles provide examples of intervention studies that are excellent models for the field. They rely on rigorous and elegant designs, the interventions are motivated by attention to underlying theoretical mechanisms, and longitudinal designs are used to examine the duration of effects of interventions that occur. When studies are…