Parental incarceration, poverty, urban violence, and drug use can be underlying factors of academic achievement gaps between Black urban males and their counterparts. These risk factors have the potential to position low-income urban students as struggling readers. Two qualitative case studies obtained from a larger mixed methods study illustrate…

Researchers have posited that children generally learn to read in environments that are trusting, comfortable, and offer small group or one-to-one adult support, all of which are characteristics of a high quality early childhood education program. This evaluation research study examines the Pre-Kindergarten Incentive Program, an early childhood…

The authors analyzed the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) national data set to investigate gender differences in ability group placement in American kindergartens. They found that in kindergarten, within-class ability grouping was widely used for reading instruction, with boys being underrepresented in high-achieving…

This is a literature review of studies and articles surrounding the issue of literacy strategies for adolescents in high school who continue to struggle with reading. It is also a review of research about where literacy interventions should take place and what obstacles may keep the strategies from either being effective or serving the best…

This study explored the use of animal-assisted therapy with students identified with a learning disability and limited reading success. Initially, reading progress was defined as the participants' comprehension rate obtained from an oral Informal Reading Inventory (IRI) passage. The nature of the Informal Reading Inventory requires the…

The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to investigate if students who read decodable books during independent reading time improved word reading and decoding skills more than students who read authentic literature during independent reading time but received the same instruction. The study was conducted for 10 weeks with 62 second-grade…

Would you like your students to be excited when they read a new word and keen to work out its meaning straight away? This book will turn them into word detectives, ready to tackle any new word they come across. And when writing, would you like them to make sentences that have interesting and descriptive words like "shamble," "ravenous" or…

This project is a multi-site, multi-year study designed to test the efficacy of a fully developed intervention, Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR), with adolescent readers. In year 1, the research questions were: (1) "Does CSR improve reading comprehension for adolescent readers attending relatively low SES schools?"; and (2)…

This study examines and describes (1) why parents of struggling readers decide they must become active advocates for changes in their child's education and (2) how such parents learn to negotiate school organization in this advocacy. Advocacy is defined as any activity parents go about to access appropriate reading instruction for their child,…

The purpose of this multi-method study was to describe early childhood teachers' beliefs regarding what motivates and what presents barriers to reading for boys. This study used the two data collection strategies of an online survey and interviews. The research questions guiding this study were: (1) what do early childhood teachers believe boys…

The purpose of this qualitative inquiry was to determine how the viewing of phonemic awareness video clips impacted teachers' metacognitive processes related to the instruction of phonemic awareness. This study examined the background knowledge of phonemic awareness that the teachers brought to their instruction of phonemic awareness. The impact…

This case study examined the impact of classroom interventions for struggling readers as changed/improved by teachers who participated in ongoing professional development on brain research studies. It investigated how teachers' knowledge of brain research impacted their instruction and the interventions they implemented in elementary classrooms.…

This guide is intended to make it easier to implement the Reading for Meaning strategy from the ultimate guide to teaching strategies, "The Strategic Teacher". When you and your colleagues want to explore more ways to help students understand what they read, make inferences, and support their thinking with evidence, this book is your ideal tool.…

"Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction" is a reading comprehension instructional program for grades 3-9 that integrates reading and science through activities and the use of science books during reading instruction. The program supplements a school's standard science and reading curricula and offers instruction in reading strategies,…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of the story-map technique on reading comprehension skills among students with mild mental retardation. The research group consisted of 14 students with mild mental retardation. The students in the research group were chosen from students who attended to an elementary school and a…