For novice and experienced instructors alike, facilitating online discussions can seem like a daunting prospect. Many ask themselves how to do so in an effective and meaningful way that actually adds to the course experience rather than seeming like mere busywork. The MANIC discussion strategy is one that promotes deeper student interaction with…

This mixed methods case study examined the implementation of a 1:1 iPad initiative in a suburban, co-educational, independent, preK-4th grade elementary school in the United States. This article focuses on how teachers used iPads to differentiate instruction and across multiple content areas. Findings show the processes by which teachers employed…

Targeted to children as young as 3 months old, there is a growing number of baby media products that claim to teach babies to read. This randomized controlled trial was designed to examine this claim by investigating the effects of a best-selling baby media product on reading development. One hundred and seventeen infants, ages 9 to 18 months,…

We examined the impact of a teacher-led intervention, implemented during regular classroom instruction and homework, on fourth-grade students' preference for self-regulated learning, finding main ideas in expository texts, and reading comprehension. In our quasi-experimental study with intact classrooms, (a) students (n = 266, 12 classrooms) who…

Motivation plays an important in role in education. Based on the ten macro-strategies proposed by Dörnyei and Csizér (1998), this article analyzes the motivation conditions in a foreign language reading comprehension course using both a web-based modality and a face-to-face modality. A case study was implemented as the primary research method, and…

This study examines vodcasting as an effective instructional activity that can transform students' negative feelings about reading and book reports into more positive experiences. The study employed a qualitative research paradigm and single-case study research design to investigate the impact of using vodcasting in a middle grades language arts…

Fourth graders whose silent word reading and/or sentence reading rate was, on average, two-thirds standard deviation below their oral reading of real and pseudowords and reading comprehension accuracy were randomly assigned to treatment ("n" = 7) or wait-listed ("n" = 7) control groups. Following nine sessions combining…

This qualitative study examined the amount of time that fourth and fifth grade teachers devoted to literacy instruction within the time allotted to them within the daily literacy block. Prior research of the literacy block focused largely on primary grades (Allington, McGill-Franzen et a1.,2010; Cunningham & Allington, 2003; Morrow, 1992);…

The Literacy Intervention Toolkit (LIT) programme aims to improve the reading ability of children in Year 7 who scored below Level 4 at the end of primary school using a method known as reciprocal teaching. Reciprocal teaching methods encourage children to 'become the teacher'. They are taught how to apply four comprehension strategies:…

Cultural sensitivity and responsiveness are being advocated in reading assessments to reduce the impact of community speech patterns (CSP) on the accuracy of miscue analysis. This study, motivated by a high incidence of retention in 1st grade in a local school district, investigated whether CSP among students affected reading outcomes and…

Reading challenges are still evident for more than 90 million adults in the United States who are functioning at the lowest levels of literacy (United States Department of Education, 2004). Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI) is one program designed to address these educational needs. The purpose of this quantitative study was to investigate the…

In 2010, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the Kindergarten Readiness Act into law. The law changed the kindergarten entry cutoff so that children must turn five by September 1 to enter kindergarten. The law also established a new grade level--Transitional Kindergarten (TK)--which is the first year of a two-year kindergarten experience for…

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether professional development enhanced educators' use of conversational strategies during shared book reading with small groups of preschoolers. Twenty preschool educators and small groups of children from each of their classrooms were randomly assigned to the experimental or control group. The 10…

This study examined the impact of independent practice of multiple-criteria text that targeted high-frequency words, decodability, and meaningfulness. Second-grade students, including at-risk students, were randomly assigned within classroom to a treatment group that read multiple-criteria text ("n" = 34), or contrast group that read…

Repeated reading of infrequent syllables has been shown to increase reading speed at the word level in a transparent orthography. This study confirms these results with a computer-based training method and extends them by comparing the training effects of short syllables and long frequent and infrequent syllables, controlling for rapid automatized…