This article describes the actions taken by the members of the school leadership team at McWhirter Elementary Professional Development Laboratory School in Webster, Texas, when the results of the state reading assessment in spring 2010, had taken a sudden and dramatic drop from the previous year. The team designed an action research study to…

Discussing and exploring concepts is an important element of literacy and mathematics instruction in elementary classrooms. Read-alouds provide an opportunity for teachers to engage students in meaningful discussion. This article describes a quick three-step process for mathematizing books, that is, weaving together read-alouds, discussion, and…

In this study, we tracked elementary preservice teachers' (N = 41) perceived ability to teach reading as they moved through their teacher preparation program. After graduation, we conducted follow-up teaching observations and interviews with five of these novice teachers to explore their perceptions about their ability to teach reading. An…

The role of letters and syllables in typical and dysfluent second grade reading in Finnish, a transparent orthography, was assessed by lexical decision and naming tasks. Typical readers did not show reliable word length effects in lexical decision, suggesting establishment of parallel letter processing. However, there were small effects of word…

Service learning can contribute to preservice teachers' understandings of reading instruction and also their confidence as teachers of reading. This qualitative study compared two sections of one undergraduate reading methods course: one with a service learning component and one with a typical field placement. The service learning…

The author describes a graduate class she teaches called Perspectives on Literacy and Technology, whose first goal is to provide a space for teachers enrolled in a literacy education MS program to reflect on current theory and research related to digital technologies and literacy. A secondary goal is to foster their use of "cutting-edge"…

Children with reading difficulties often face social and emotional challenges as well. These struggles may be particularly taxing for these children as classrooms increase in diversity and they encounter fewer people like themselves. In response to these issues, we developed an approach to teaching reading called Relationally Oriented Reading…

The increasing diversity of Swedish society is affecting the Swedish school. Applying the perspective of critical literacy (Janks 2010), this study examines how teachers' attitudes in a multilingual classroom affect the ability of pupils to develop semantic and critically reflective competence. The study shows that the class teachers hardly…

The present study investigates the effectiveness of integrating RCampus in EFL freshman classrooms in developing EFL students' reading and writing skills. Two groups of freshman students majoring in translation participated in the study. Before instruction, pretest results showed no significant difference between the experimental and control…

Research investigating the complex, multi-directional relationships inherent to public education has become a focal point of reform research. This study investigated the perceptions held by district-level leaders regarding the Colorado Department of Education's efforts to facilitate the successful implementation of reading policy. In addition, it…

High quality student engagement activities are essential if students are to be successful learners. Over the years, many instructional strategies and models have been devised to encourage teachers to develop student engagement activities that result in high achievement. The Reading First Model initiative was introduced as a part of the No Child…

Electronic books have rapidly moved through the entertainment community and are rapidly making their way into the academic environment. Public and private schools, libraries and training organizations use eBooks for research and instruction. This study sought to enhance the learning habits of students taking self-paced correspondence courses…

The authors examine the growth and impact of guided reading, small group teaching for differentiated instruction in reading that was stimulated by their early publications. Many changes in literacy education have been observed as a result--almost as if educators had a "romance" with guided reading and leveled books. While changes have been…

This study was designed to examine whether a variety of cognitive and linguistic factors theoretically considered to be predictive of reading comprehension skills in elementary school children were also predictive of listening comprehension skills in 131 five-year-old children. The results showed that the predictors of young children's listening…

Literacy skills acquired during the first years of schooling have been recognised as the key to students' learning success. However, despite the continuing efforts by the New Zealand government and teachers there is still a large proportion of students who struggle to become literate. To address this issue the Ministry of Education funded selected…