In this foreword to the special issue of the "Journal of Education" celebrating the 30th anniversary of the publication of "Becoming a Nation of Readers: The Report of the Commission on Reading" ("BNR") (Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkinson, 1985), we share the backstory of the making of "BNR." We view…

Teachers in primary classrooms who are emphasizing high-level comprehension of complex texts are seeing young children hit comprehension thresholds that were previously only visible among older readers. However, most primary level reading interventions focus on word recognition skills or reading increasingly difficult leveled texts. This article…

This study is motivated by the fact that there are still many lower grade students who have not been able to read fluently. Big book learning media can be used by teachers to teach beginning reading to lower grade students. The purpose of this study is to describe the use of big book learning media to improve beginning reading skills. The study…

Low reading comprehension skills at the secondary level are problematic, especially for students with learning disabilities. In order for students with learning disabilities to perform and achieve academically, effective methods of instruction need to be implemented. This present study utilized a qualitative research methodology (with a…

Intensive reading in a second language (L2) can be challenging for both teachers and students because the reading level of the text is often higher than what students can easily read on their own. Reading a text that could be informative and interesting instead can become a struggle. And so, as teachers, we need to provide consistent intervention…

Taiwan's National Development Council recently announced plans for the country to become bilingual by the year 2030. However, the Council did not lay out a clear road map for how this major accomplishment is to be achieved, and the curriculum presently in place does not seem to meet the challenge. This article will review the current status of…

Teaching students to generate questions to monitor their reading comprehension is an evidence-based practice demonstrated to be effective across grade levels for students with and without disabilities. As self-questioning is a complex skill, many students can benefit from additional instructional supports, especially when they are first learning…

The achievement gap has been the focus of a good deal of research, attention, and hopeful new practices, yet it has hardly decreased. Using insights from sociolinguistic and sociocultural studies of classrooms in concert with practices developed by teacher researchers in the tradition of the Brookline Teacher Researcher Seminar, the author…

Maintaining a focus on reading comprehension is essential for students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), as some will still need to develop this skill during their high school years. Two evidence-based approaches for reading comprehension for high school students with ASD are Alternate Achievement Literacy (AAL) and Collaborative Strategic…

Students with intellectual disability often have difficulty reading commonly used words. Researchers have found altering printed text from fluent, easy-to-read font, to disfluent, difficult-to-read font can enhance comprehension and recall. An adapted alternating treatments design was used to evaluate and compare sight-word acquisition and…

Students are expected to recognize the vocabulary items appearing in a text in order for reading to be meaningful. The evaluation of word recognition is commonly considered in educational applications in order for reading to be meaningful for students and to identify and correct mistakes. This study aims to exhibit the effectiveness of the…

Reading-while-listening may be especially well suited for young language learners because of the multimodality provided in many graded readers aimed at this age group (ie., the presence of oral and written text and illustrations). This study compares a group of students who were exposed to 18 sessions of reading-while-listening with a group…

This study describes the development of an innovative multimedia application and examines teacher perceptions of its usefulness in assisting students with imagery deficit to visualize the reading comprehension. Students with good reading skills can easily create mental representations from oral or written language, and their sensory system quickly…

Purpose: E-learning is part of instructional design and has opened a whole world of new possibilities in terms of learning and teaching. The purpose of this paper is to develop an adaptive e-learning platform that enhances skills from primary school to university learners. Two purposes converge here: a pedagogical one -- offering new…

The effectiveness of an intervention program aimed at improving morphological awareness was evaluated in Hebrew-speaking poor readers in Grade 5. The 12-week intervention in small groups focused on learning morphological structure of words by identifying, decomposing, and constructing morphologically complex words. Results were compared with a…