A recent article by Stuebing, Barth, Cirino, Francis and Fletcher critiqued the findings of Camilli, Vargas, and Yurecko (2003) and Camilli, Wolfe, and Smith (2006). With a methodological argument, they attempted to resolve the conflict between these studies and the original report Teaching Children to Read (National Reading Panel, 2000). In…

Stanislas Dehaene has published a remarkable book on the neurons of reading. It is a comprehensive description of the main issues related to the "paradox of reading": how humans process linguistic information using the visual brain path while the brain has not evolved in the short period of time since the invention of writing. The article presents…

The terms "reading skill" and "reading strategy" are central to how we conceptualize and teach reading. Despite their importance and widespread use, the terms are not consistently used or understood. This article examines the current and historical uses of the terms, defines them, and describes their differences, similarities, and relationships.…

This Evidence Based Education (EBE) request focused on research-supported vocabulary interventions for middle elementary students. Limited vocabulary is an important factor in underachievement of children in disadvantaged homes. Children with larger vocabularies find reading easier, read more widely, and do better in school (Lubliner & Smetana,…

This article critiques the articles by Connor et al., Croninger and Valli, Pianta and Hamre, and Rowan and Correnti, which appeared in the March 2009 issue of "Educational Researcher," by taking a cultural-historical perspective on reading and reading instruction. In this paradigm a number of those authors' assumptions are seen as questionable,…

A growing corpus of evidence suggests that morphology could play a role in reading acquisition, and that young readers could be sensitive to the morphemic structure of written words. In the present experiment, we examined whether and when morphological information is activated in word recognition. French fourth graders made visual lexical…

The study monitored the eye movements of twenty 5-year-old children while reading an alphabet book to examine the manner in which the letters, words, and pictures were fixated and the relation of attention to print to alphabetic knowledge. Children attended little to the print, took longer to first fixate print than illustrations, and labeled…

Developing lifelong readers is integral to the role of the librarian. Facilitating, encouraging, and promoting reading is not an add-on to the job. Consider the role librarians play in developing readers in school. They know they are contributors; they must make sure the school community is aware of their valuable role in supporting the five…

What factors determine whether a young child will learn a new word? Although there are surely numerous contributors, the current investigation highlights the role of causal information. Three-year-old children (N = 36) were taught 6 new words for unfamiliar objects or animals. Items were described in terms of their causal or noncausal properties.…

The current educational spotlight on accountability has helped create a focus on teacher practices and their subsequent effects on student achievement. Professional development has been shown to be an effective vehicle to impact practices; however, research has only recently begun to provide an understanding of its impact in literacy instruction…

In this article, the author examines the role of "hand dominance" in beginning braille readers. "Hand dominance" refers to whether an individual is "right handed" or "left handed." The data for these analyses were taken from the Alphabetic Braille and Contracted Braille Study (ABC Braille Study). The ABC Braille Study was a five-year nonrandomized…

Increasing achievement for all students is a focus of general and special education reform today. Especially in the area of reading, there are many children who are at risk for failure. The purpose of this study was to describe teachers' use of instructional time during literacy with students at schools with (Title One) and without (non-Title)…

This study investigated factors that would affect a reader's understanding of the main idea at the global level and explicit and implicit main ideas at the local level. Fifty-seven first-year university students taking a college reading course took a comprehension test on an expository text. Statistical analyses revealed that text structure had a…

Several authors have described the many benefits of undergraduate practica, how to organize an undergraduate practicum experience, and different undergraduate practicum activities. This article provides a description of the process of organizing and implementing National Depression Screening Day at a university campus as an undergraduate practicum…

The purpose of this article is to document and describe coaching conversations between literacy coaches and teachers in elementary schools that were seeing gains in students' reading achievement. Participants were drawn from literacy coaches in twenty-four Reading First schools in Minnesota. Detailed notes of the coaching conversations were…