The purpose of the study was to examine the impact of a teacher's preparation program on the academic achievement of eighth grade students in the areas of mathematics, reading, science, and social studies. Prior to the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2001, the majority of classroom teachers earned their teaching…

Urban schools are struggling to hire and retain effective literacy teachers. Alternative certification programs throughout the country seek to bridge the achievement gap and to bring qualified teachers to underserved classrooms. This dissertation explores the transformative inquiry of developing "resident" teachers in their journey as…

This quantitative study addresses the problem of reading and behavioral performance in elementary school by examining the impact of a universal preventive intervention on both the proximal and distal outcomes of students in the fourth grade at a mid-western elementary school. These proximal outcomes (disruptions per student per hour) were measured…

Some scholars have highlighted the benefits of using extensive reading as a way to motivate students to learn a second language (L2). This article is derived from a study that aimed at implementing extensive reading in an action research project in a public University in Mexico. Therefore, the following article examines some arguments of different…

Freebody and Luke proffered an expanded conceptualization of the resources readers utilize when reading and the roles readers adopt during the act of reading. The four resources model, and its associated four roles of the reader, expanded the definition of reading from a simple model of decoding printed texts to a model of constructing meaning and…

The academic landscape has been changing over the last several years bringing with it an emphasis on high stakes testing. Studies conducted over the past several years that have shown the success of the Question-Answer-Relationships (QAR) strategy in helping students develop their comprehension skill. This study looks at the effects of the QAR…

All over the World most effective methods for teaching reading to beginning-level adults have been applied. My continuing challenge has been to determine how reading acquisition research can be applied to teaching reading to adults. In this article, I describe the techniques I have found most useful; I hope other teachers working with beginning…

Many researchers have documented the interrelatedness of reading and behavior (McIntosh, Sadler, & Brown, 2012). Thus, research examining the best way to intervene with students who exhibit problems in both skill sets is merited. Recently, taking an integrated approach to reading and behavioral intervention has been suggested (Mooney, Ryan, Uhing,…

One of the rumors making the rounds of K-12 educators goes something like this: The Common Core State Standards do not allow "prereading"--the pedagogical practice meant to help students better understand a text they are about to read--or for that matter any classroom activities that contextualize a text through outside sources. The interesting…

The present study examined the generalized effects of training children to fluently blend nonsense words containing target vowel teams on their reading of untrained real words in lists and passages. Eight second-grade students participated. Nonsense words containing each of 3 target vowel teams ("aw," "oi," and "au")…

This action research study gathered data from journals and semi-structured interviews to explore four preservice teachers' perceptions of reading instruction and preparation practices. In the setting of a field-based reading methods course, Kolb's Experiential Learning Model (ELM) provided a theoretical lens to view participants'…

Students are often referred for special education evaluations following teacher generated referrals. These referrals indicate observable poor academic progress, although often there is no indication of the cause of the poor performance as well as no indication of remediation attempts prior to a special education referral. Students who demonstrate…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) fulfill a longstanding goal of ensuring that all students, regardless of ability, are college and career ready upon graduation. Students who meet the expectations of the standards are able to comprehend complex text closely and extract meaning and information from it. They are close readers, delving into…

When providing effective reading and writing instruction, teachers need to provide explicit modeling. Modeling is particularly important when teaching students to use cognitive learning strategies. Examples of how teachers can provide specific, explicit, and flexible instructional modeling is presented in the context of two evidence-based…

This study examined the relations among features of the classroom physical literacy environment (book materials, literacy area and writing materials) and psychological literacy environment (instructional support), and preschool children's gains in two areas of emergent literacy over an academic year. Results showed that features of the physical…