Understanding the learning profiles of children, when teaching reading, affects the progress of their reading, in particular for children with Down syndrome. Specifically teaching word recognition, phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge, and comprehension, while understanding the ways in which children with Down syndrome learn, will…

Students who struggle with reading have particular trouble with expository text. Instruction in text structures has been shown to be effective for improving expository reading comprehension. However, few studies have been conducted specifically with upper elementary aged struggling readers. To address these issues, we developed a new intervention,…

This article describes how secondary teachers might implement readers theater in their classrooms. In addition to reading fluency, this five-day format also explicitly targets reading comprehension and vocabulary. Each day of the week requires students to engage in various activities aimed to develop diverse components of reading as well as…

Standardised curriculum or standardized lesson plans (SLPs) have become an accepted strategy to support and improve instructional practices in schools worldwide. These standardised lesson plans (SLPs) were criticized in the 1970s and 1980s for deskilling the teaching profession and reducing the work of teachers to that of mere technicians. This…

Teaching children too many words during a lesson reduces retention. The amount of new information a student can successfully rehearse and recall later is called acquisition rate (AR), which has been reliably measured with students in first, third, and fifth grades. The purpose of this study was to examine the reliability of assessing AR for sight…

The purpose of this historical project was to compare 19th and 20th century books that originated approximately 165 years apart from collections at Miami University (Oxford, OH) in order to interpret how an early language and vocabulary may have emerged from literacy practices of reading printed books to form an early conception of health…

Enjoyment of reading books is related to reading proficiency, and fostering students' enjoyment of reading is imperative to support continued reading engagement. However, not all students understand that reading is important, and not all students are regularly engaged in recreational reading. Children typically read for pleasure less often as they…

This article reports two experiments in which the artificial orthography paradigm was used to investigate the mechanisms underlying learning to read. In each experiment, participants were taught the meanings and pronunications of words written in an unfamiliar orthography, and the statistical structure of the mapping between written and spoken…

This study examined the use of sequenced visual images (graphic novels and comic books) to scaffold incidental vocabulary learning and text comprehension while processing visual and textual information. Due to the recent growth of graphic novels as a popular text format, empirical investigation is needed to ascertain its value and to possibly…

This dissertation explores four of my kindergartners' understandings of gender across one academic year with an in-depth study of responses to a series of picture book read alouds including Cinderella variants. Critical literacy offered opportunities for these young students to critique inequities within social practices (Au & Raphael, 2000;…

Most students in Saudi Arabia struggle with reading, especially reading comprehension. The purpose of this quantitative study is to determine the effects of adapting and implementing an American workshop strategy on fifth-grade Saudi students' reading comprehension. The long-term goal is to increase Saudi students' reading comprehension in general…

Students who struggle with reading have particular trouble with expository text. Instruction in text structures has been shown to be effective for improving expository reading comprehension. However, few studies have been conducted specifically with upper elementary aged struggling readers. To address these issues, we developed a new intervention,…

The Big Lift™ (Big Lift) is a preschool to third-grade initiative designed to boost literacy skills and ensure that children are reading proficiently by the third grade. First launched in 2012 by the County of San Mateo, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and the San Mateo County Office of Education, Big Lift comprises more than 300…

Vocabulary instruction is an important part of every classroom. Teachers and administrators continually seek effective instructional approaches to help students increase vocabulary knowledge. The purpose of this chapter is to describe how the author used daily vocabulary journal activities with a class of 2nd grade students. This chapter first…

Fountas and Pinnell (2012) warn that guided reading is not always synonymous with small-group instruction. While it may appear simple, much thought goes into a guided reading lesson. This chapter details the steps for teachers to follow in order to develop more effective guided reading and small group instruction for all students by identifying…