In this paper, we seek to inform policy regarding the professional development of teachers of students who are learning English. To do this, we employ a framework that considers the pedagogical knowledge, practical teaching skills, and dispositions recommended by PD researchers and ELL teacher educators. We then present an approach that…

In 2011, a national strategy "Literacy and Numeracy for Learning and Life" was published in the Republic of Ireland. One key aspect of the strategy was that it placed a renewed focus on reading for pleasure in post-primary classrooms. The researchers involved in this article worked for the Professional Development Service for Teachers, a…

Tier 3 interventions are necessary for students who fail to respond adequately to Tier 1 general education instruction and Tier 2 supplemental reading intervention instruction. We identified 8 students in 3rd and 4th grade who had demonstrated a slow response to Tier 2 reading interventions for three years. Students participated in a…

Content-oriented reading interventions that focus on the integration of motivational enhancement and strategy instruction have been found to have positive effects. Developmental education (DE) in the Netherlands is an innovative content-oriented approach in which reading is an integral part of an inquiry-oriented curriculum. Reading for meaning is…

A qualitative think-aloud study, informed by social literacies and holistic bilingual perspectives, was conducted to examine how six emergent bilingual, Mexican American, fourth graders approached, interacted with, and comprehended narrative and expository texts in Spanish and English. The children had strong Spanish reading test scores, but…

Reading comprehension in the content areas is a challenge for many middle grade students. Text structure-based instruction has yielded positive outcomes in reading comprehension at all grade levels in small and large studies. The text structure strategy delivered via the web, called Intelligent Tutoring System for the Text Structure Strategy…

This paper reports the effects on children, teacher candidates, and classroom teachers of a PDS-based initial certification course in the teaching of literacy. In this course, teacher candidates work with individual struggling readers on a range of literacy tasks, and the classroom teacher and university faculty member serve as course…

This article reports on 2 experiments in inner-city Baltimore evaluating a computer-assisted tutoring approach, Tutoring With Alphie (TWA), in which 1 paraprofessional can work with up to 6 children at a time. In Study 1, we randomly assigned 14 schools to receive TWA or to continue with whatever approaches they were currently using. Each…

Reading and comprehending content area texts require learners to effectively select and encode with hierarchically strategic memory structures in order to combine new information with prior knowledge. Unfortunately, evidence from state and national tests shows that children fail to successfully navigate the reading comprehension challenges they…

The authors describe a month-long unit on Afro-Latin@ identity in which third grade students began with a discussion of complex questions with which many historians, anthropologists, and scholars struggle to make sense. The goal of this month-long unit was to have students adopt the lens of cultural anthropologists as they explored the historical…

Writing plays a significant role in language learning. Previous research has reported on the effectiveness of several approaches to develop writing skills to enhance writing competence, but little attention has been given to the paragraph writing of elementary students. The present qualitative action research study used artifacts, teacher's…

"Leveled Literacy Intervention" ("LLI") is a short-term, supplementary, small-group literacy intervention designed to help struggling readers achieve grade-level competency. The intervention provides explicit instruction in phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, reading comprehension, oral language skills, and…

The intent of this qualitative case study was to take an in-depth look at the perceived benefit or lack thereof of a programmed reading curriculum for students with moderate cognitive disabilities within a Title 1 inner-city school. The rationale for the study was that students with moderate cognitive disabilities have difficulties learning to…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of the EMBRACE Spanish support intervention for at-risk dual language learners and to determine which verbal and nonverbal characteristics of students were related to benefit from the intervention. The first study examined oral language and reading characteristics and the second study…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore ways in which third, fourth, and fifth grade teachers reported they successfully improved the reading achievement of students with LD as documented by an increase in test scores on standardized tests in reading. Moreover, this study is an examination of productive ways in which elementary classroom…