Teaching reading to low-level English as a Second Language (ESL) students can be a challenge, according to the author. At times, teachers are teaching adult students to read in English when some in class are not literate in their first language. In such a situation, they are not mapping a sound-symbol correspondence onto a known oral language, as…

"Reading maturity" is a construct that looks broadly at reading development encompassing not only basic reading skills but reading habits, attitudes, and dispositions. It has a rich history and this article calls for a need to make reading maturity a necessary part of the literacy curriculum. It offers a working description and reviews…

Graphic novels (book-length fiction or nonfiction narratives told using the conventions of a comic book) bring together text and image in a way that seems to capture students' imaginations. Right now, there is little more than anecdotal research about how graphic novels can be used within specific middle school and high school disciplines. As…

Read-aloud is a technique predominantly utilized at the elementary level. This study was designed to research the effectiveness of this technique at the middle school level, specifically students who were not receiving special education or additional reading intervention services. For the current investigation, students in two middle schools…

Members of a large, cross-Canada research project on using Canadian social justice literature in the classroom share strategies that teachers are using to teach some of these texts. Strategies range from multi-media projects to song adaptations. Texts and strategies suitable for different grade-levels are represented, and cover a range of…

Ten first grade students who had responded poorly to a Tier 2 reading intervention in a response to intervention (RTI) model received an intervention of video self-modeling to improve decoding skills and sight word recognition. Students were video recorded blending and segmenting decodable words and reading sight words. Videos were edited and…

The purpose of this article is to present a model for screening for twice-exceptional status (i.e., gifted students who have a learning disability). Curriculum-based measures (Monitoring Instructional Responsiveness: Reading and Monitoring Instructional Responsiveness: Math) were administered to 1,242 third-grade students within a Response to…

The vast proportion of Australia's Indigenous students are represented persistently as well below the national benchmarks for literacy and numeracy. Recent national school-based research and development projects, funded by the Australian Government's "Closing the Gap" strategy, have again targeted improving Indigenous students' literacy…

The article focuses on the notion of tablet technologies as placed resources (Prinsloo, 2005; Prinsloo & Rowsell, 2012) by exploring how an international research project in Australia, Canada, and the United States forged community through online spaces. There is a tendency in media and in literature to romanticize technologies like iPads as a…

In the present project we tested the hypothesis that tutorial situations with peers would benefit children's reading motivation. Participants were from elementary school--80 fourth-graders and 80 second-graders. We used a questionnaire to assess reading motivation. In the tutorial sessions we developed a Paired Reading Program. The children who…

This article provides an extensive review of the literature on the use of repeated reading to improve the reading fluency and comprehension skills of elementary-age students with learning disabilities. A systematic review of the published literature from 2001 to 2011 was conducted and nineteen (N = 19) research-based repeated reading studies were…

Phonological development was assessed in six alphabetic orthographies (English, French, Greek, Icelandic, Portuguese and Spanish) at the beginning and end of the first year of reading instruction. The aim was to explore contrasting theoretical views regarding: the question of the availability of phonology at the outset of learning to read (Study…

Students with diverse learning needs, including students with disabilities, have historically struggled in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning. This article highlights barriers that students with disabilities and other struggling learners often face in STEM education. Several applied, evidence-based practices are…

The authors compared the effects of two sight word fluency drills (i.e., reading racetrack and list drills). They used a repeated acquisition design across 8 second-grade students identified as at risk for reading difficulties. More participants performed better when they read words on the reading racetrack than on the list; however, results were…

This study examined how effectively candidates in an MSEd in literacy education with a focus on reading program used the results from the Basic Reading Inventory to develop key instructional recommendations. The results indicated that, overall, candidates made about two thirds of the key recommendations suggested by an expert in the area of…