Students in the targeted school exhibited a decline in reading scores between second and fourth grade. Due to poor reading levels for 2 consecutive years the state put the school on a probationary list with in its district. Evidence for the existence of the problem included documented low reading test scores, below proficiency assessment records,…

This book presents strategies for helping struggling readers, from those who simply need extra assistance to those needing more intensive help. The book is useful for classroom teachers and reading teachers as well as undergraduate and graduate students, and it offers a quick reference guide and full page resource materials ready for photocopying.…

Discusses building fluency in reading and writing and teaching students to read and write for pleasure. Highlights include multimedia storyboards; bilingual instruction; writing programs for building fluency; CD-ROM storyboards; student-created storyboards; and an annotated bibliography of CD-ROM storyboards, poetry collections, and composing…

Describes a peer tutoring program used in grades two and three of a school where the majority of children entering school do not speak English as their first language. Shows impressive gains made by the children in reading fluency, comprehension, and in spelling. Notes the program's positive effects on reading attitudes, positive social skills,…

This study examines the longitudinal relations among early literacy experiences at home and children's kindergarten literacy skills, Grade 1 word reading and spelling skills, and Grade 4 reading comprehension, fluency, spelling, and reading for pleasure. Ninety French-speaking children were tested at the end of kindergarten and Grade 1, and 65…

The purpose of this study was to provide an in-depth investigation of the four lowest performing students in one kindergarten classroom. The students were provided with 10 weeks of explicit, intensive intervention in phonological awareness skills. Three types of data were collected during the intervention: fluency measures; strategy use to perform…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 mandated statewide accountability testing and focused the accountability conversation on reading. Therefore, the current study examined the relationship between curriculum-based measurement for reading (R-CBM) and state accountability test scores, potential grade differences in relationship magnitude, and…

The Partnership for Reading (PFR) in the United States has recently thrown its hat into the ring of adult literacy research and practice. Its information about adult literacy comes, almost entirely, from the National Reading Panel's (NRP) data on children. Building its case from the NRP data, the PFR advocates for a narrow, school-based conception…

The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of a supplemental peer-tutoring reading program on phonological and reading fluency skills of first graders (N=78) who were in predominantly Hispanic Title 1 classrooms. Sixty-eight percent of the students were Hispanic, all were English speaking. Six classrooms were randomly assigned to either…

Legislative language, mandated by the newly reauthorized Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) of 2004 and the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001, underscores a number of issues relevant to students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds displaying reading-achievement difficulties. In this article,…

Oral reading fluency is defined as the combination of accuracy (i.e., words read correctly) and rate (i.e., number of words read in a specified time). One strategy that addresses oral reading fluency is repeated reading of passages. Repeated reading can improve students' reading skills by building reading fluency linked to specific performance…

The Simple View of Reading states that reading comprehension is the product of word recognition and listening comprehension. Whereas much research has focused on word recognition accuracy, recent attention has been directed toward word recognition fluency. The current study investigated whether a separate fluency component should be added to the…

Much research has validated procedures to enhance reading fluency in children and adolescents, but more is needed to determine whether such procedures work with adults who have deficits in reading skills. A within-subjects design was used to evaluate and compare the effects of listening while reading (LWR) and repeated readings (RR) on reading…

In this technical report, the authors describe the development alternate forms of Word and Passage Reading Fluency measures as part of a comprehensive progress monitoring literacy assessment system developed in 2006 for use with students in Kindergarten through fourth grade. They begin with a brief overview of the two conceptual frameworks…

President Bush says that the No Child Left Behind Act is working, pointing to student-achievement results from a single subsection of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and tentative Reading First data. But the evidence available to support his claim is questionable. The data Mr. Bush cited are from just the "long-term…