LXD Research was engaged by 95 Percent Group to conduct a third-party, mixed-methods efficacy study of their 95 Phonics Core Program (95 PCP) to evaluate the impact on fourth and fifth grade literacy outcomes over the school year 2023-2024. LXD analyzed the formative assessment data from i-Ready, focusing on overall scale scores, subdomains, and…

The authors report on substantial evidence documenting what matters in literacy teacher preparation and invite deans, department heads, program directors, literacy teacher educators, and literacy leaders to design programs that are supported by credible evidence of impact.

Purpose: To become good at anything we need to practice. However, in the classroom context, much of the reading time is devoted to instruction rather than practice. Reading practice should be daily. Text choice, motivation and reading for pleasure all interact to support implicit learning. Design/methodology/approach: Review and synthesise the…

This paper reports on a four-year study where campus leaders used collaborative inquiry twinned with generative dialogue to facilitate teacher growth in order to improve the teaching and learning of reading in a school where reading results were already strong. The paper contributes to the school improvement literature by capturing the two main…

Prior research has established preservice literacy teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning are often misguided and/or overly-simplistic, yet limited work has examined in what ways their in-the-moment teaching decisions align or misalign with what they believe. This qualitative study used deductive analysis methods to: (1) Identify three…

This study investigated Reading Recovery teacher understandings about language and early literacy acquisition by applying a constructivist grounded theory design. Participants were Reading Recovery teachers working across three varied districts in Massachusetts (N=33). The purpose of the study was to engage Reading Recovery teachers in surveys,…

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which traditional and alternative preparation programs differ in terms of their program components, as well as whether program type was related to different levels of self-efficacy in novice reading teachers. This exploratory study collected data from 83 novice elementary reading teachers in a…

The authors share an activity in which two fifth-grade teachers and one sixth-grade teacher received book talk videos via Flipgrid from preservice literacy teachers and watched the videos with their students. Students responded with feedback and suggestions for how to better represent each book. The authors compiled and coded students' comments…

Serving both teachers and students in a hybrid literacy professional role requires thoughtful planning and reflection. In this article, the authors reflect on their work over the course of one school year to determine how to manage time effectively to combine the job descriptions of reading specialist and literacy coach. Strategies are presented…

Differentiated instruction (DI) is recognized as a factor that could improve the reading disparity among students despite diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. Few studies have been conducted that document elementary public school reading teachers' perspectives on differentiating reading instruction and selecting DI strategies for low-performing,…

This mixed-method study explored teachers' perceptions of the Living Libraries (LL) professional development program. The study investigated the program's perceived effectiveness and impact on students' reading skills. Additionally, the researchers sought to understand how LL trained teachers perceived the program as aiding their reading…

This study was designed to highlight how students best learn to learn to read, best practices of reading instruction, innovative resources, and effective instructional strategies. The aim of this dissertation was to address the problem of kindergarten through fourth grade students in the United States not reading on grade level. The purpose of…

Education policy in England requires student teachers to demonstrate effective teaching of early reading, including systematic synthetic phonics, in order to qualify to teach. Although there is a range of literature about initial teacher education, little is documented about how pre-service or 'student' teachers develop specific knowledge and…

The significance of reading comprehension can hardly be overestimated. Nevertheless, teachers vary in their disposition or willingness to teach reading comprehension. A wealth of field experimental studies have confirmed the importance of text talk, in class or in teacher-guided small groups, for students´ reading comprehension. However,…

We now know a tremendous amount about early reading development, including the various skills that learners have to master and integrate to be both effective word readers and skilled comprehenders. The body of work referred to as the "science of reading" has helped illuminate these processes, and it offers important guidance for the…