A descriptive study was employed to investigate beginning teachers' experiences with reading instruction in their teacher preparation programs and to determine what areas of need have emerged now that they are practicing teachers. Data collection instruments included a reflective survey and telephone interviews. Beginning teachers perceived…

Two diverse groups of urban and suburban adolescent reluctant readers enthusiastically discussed a performance of "A Wrinkle in Time". For many of these students, it was their first experience with the theatre. What was even more important than sharing their first theatrical experience, however, was that this was the first time they completed,…

The American Foundation of Teachers (1999) has stated that "the most fundamental responsibility of schools is teaching students to read" (p. 7). The central purpose of reading is comprehension--constructing meaning from text. The purpose of the present study was to identify, review, and summarize the research published in professional…

An important, yet either often missing or under emphasized realization in both federal and state standards for literacy is that literacy is primarily a language process and culture is a reflection of language. As such, language and culture must be retained as essential components upon which reading instruction is based. Our nation and our states…

The reading coaches, professional development programs, and instructional materials that are the cornerstones of the Reading First program and are credited with improving instruction in struggling schools may be threatened by a deep cut included in the 2008 federal budget, officials and observers say. The reduction of more than 60 percent--from…

The Observation/Inference (OI) Chart is a strategy that can help students learn to make observations and inferences when reading nontraditional texts such as artifacts, paintings or movies. Nontraditional texts can be highly engaging and provide authentic thinking experiences for students, but they can also be difficult to comprehend. Teachers can…

New evidence shows that some types of metalinguistic awareness could be important for reading comprehension in much the same way that phonemic awareness is important for learning to decode. In a recent study, students between 7 and 9 years old were taught to manipulate language and understand the multiple meanings of ambiguous words and sentences.…

The speed with which the technologies of literacy are changing is dazzling and unsettling. Almost every year, it seems a new way of combining words, images, and video emerges and becomes a phenomenon among students. Meanwhile, teachers are left wondering how to respond to these new ways of writing and reading and the identities that students…

Just before the start of school in 2006, the author discovered that boys' scores trailed girls' across every grade and in every racial subgroup at her school. In this article, she describes her efforts to increase boys' participation in her annual reading promotion activity by incorporating an element of competition and tracking weekly reading…

The "Houghton Mifflin Reading"[c] system is a reading program for instruction in grades K-6. It uses Big Books (authentic literature), anthologies, Read Alouds, and audio compact discs to provide step-by-step instruction in reading. According to the developer's website, "Houghton Mifflin Reading"[c] was developed based on the…

When evaluating the effectiveness of their program, members of the Brooklyn College SEEK Department, a higher education opportunity program, decided to make their pedagogy more student-centered. They created a method of reading instruction, which they named critical inquiry. Its goals are to build community through teaching students to annotate,…

This qualitative comparative case study identified factors that distinguish between high and low-performance on reading achievement in elementary rural Appalachian schools. This study determined the most effective instructional reading strategies, as well as other influential factors, implemented by school districts in the rural Appalachia area…

For more than 50 years, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) has been instrumental in developing an analytical model for understanding the relationships between educational policy (the intended curriculum), classroom and instructional practices (the implemented curriculum), and educational learning…

As part of a diagnosis and tutoring project in an elementary education reading course, a pre-service teacher was encouraged to use an iPad as the vehicle for intervention strategies with a fifth grade struggling reader with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. The device not only helped the student focus attention, it facilitated his becoming…

The Family Backpack Project provided 249 low-income, prekindergarten children and their families with opportunities to read and listen to audio recordings of 3 sets of books in their homes. Families received English or dual-language texts (English plus Spanish, Arabic, Kurdish, or Somali) matched to their home languages. Children and their…