In today's educational environment, schools struggle to meet the academic needs of every student. Many schools are challenged by the use of a response-to-intervention framework in which too many students need strong interventions. This article details a data-driven, decision-making response-to-intervention reading team model in which teachers,…

Utilizing a New Literacies Studies framework, this article presents critical lessons in film production from a multiple site case study. Examples of children's classroom experiences demonstrate how filmmaking and play come together in a process of storying--a collaborative and multimodal approach to text composition. Students in both preschool and…

Ignorance about dyslexia meant a miserable school experience for Barrie Hughes. He was in his 50s when he found the courage to stand up in front of a classroom of learners and admit he couldn't read. Barrie, who is now 59 and works for the parks department of Brighton and Hove Council, only began to learn how to read words in the last three years…

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) "Standards for the 21st-Century Learner" is filled with objectives that are mostly unobjectionable--and that would have been just as applicable in the twentieth century. Who, after all, would oppose the idea of "organizing knowledge so it's useful"? Who's going to deny the value of effective…

Extensive reading is believed to have considerable benefits for learners both in terms of learning gains and motivation and seems to be becoming ever more popular in the ELT world. So far, however, there seems to be almost no integration of extensive reading and textbooks. This article argues that textbooks should be encouraging extensive reading,…

A long-duration stimulus will elicit a negative sustained potential (SP) that is maximum in amplitude over fronto-central areas of the scalp. This study examines how the duration of active attentional processing of the stimulus might also elicit a nonsensory contingent negative variation (CNV) that overlaps and summates to the SP. Subjects were…

Recent findings demonstrate that the most effective reading instruction may vary with children's language and literacy skills. These Child x Instruction interactions imply that individualizing instruction would be a potent strategy for improving students' literacy. A cluster-randomized control field trial, conducted in 10 high-moderate poverty…

This article provides information to support teacher practice of providing thoughtful, individually crafted, book orientations. Supporting emergent and struggling readers to access meaning, structure, and visual information keeps reading work easy, yet provides opportunities for problem solving that allows engagement in independent and successful…

Northrop Frye (1912-1991) was one of the leading literary theorists of his day, and this article shows the ways in which his theories continue to be relevant for both the field of literary criticism and elementary classroom education today. The author, an eminent scholar in the field of children's literature in her own right and a student of…

The theme for the 62nd annual conference of the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers was Educating for a Just Society. Connie Briggs, previous Program Chair, reminded us that, "Education has always been the foundation of a democratic nation. It is important that our students understand the principles upon which our nation was…

The author explored secondary content literacy in four ways: 1) to create and pilot (Re)valuing Methodology; 2) to explore the various contextual issues in secondary content area literacy through (Re)valuing Methodology; 3) to explore the beliefs and perspectives of secondary preservice teachers; and 4) to explore teachers' contextual experiences…

The present study examined the stability (i.e., 4-month and 12-month test-retest reliability) of six selected school-based indices of adequate reading progress. The total sampling frame included between 3970 and 5655 schools depending on the index and research question. Each school had at least 40 second-grade students that had complete Oral…

This innovative and practical kit, put together by two well-known specialists in the field of early literacy, contains everything storytime presenters for children from birth to age five and their parents or caregivers need to spread the word about school readiness skills to adult caregivers. The kit includes: (1) An accessible handbook with a…

In the reading course, especially the so-called intensive reading course or integrative English reading course, there are some vocabulary exercises which intend to consolidate the active vocabulary emerging in the reading passages. Mostly, these exercises are in the form of blank-filling or rewriting sentences with the words given. The problem…

Randomized trials of educational interventions often face logistical hurdles (Cook, 2002). For example, sometimes they are prevented from reaching their full-term. This would happen if, as a condition of participation, subjects insist on receiving the treatment program within a certain timeframe. This timeframe may be shorter than the full-term…