Two men with intellectual disabilities initially demonstrated intermediate accuracy in two-choice matching-to-sample (MTS) procedures. A printed-letter identity MTS procedure was used with 1 participant, and a spoken-to-printed-word MTS procedure was used with the other participant. Errors decreased substantially under a delayed-sample procedure,…

Barbershop music has undergone some thing of a revival in recent years; some would argue that it never went away. The author discusses how music teachers can make use of this uniquely American art form. Rick Spencer, director of music and education for the Barbershop Harmony Society, the world's largest all-male singing organization, encourages…

State and local assessment data from 117 students in one school in the California Central Valley were examined to determine how much participation in a kindergarten through second grade multitiered reading intervention model contributed to third grade reading achievement, over and above the demographic factors of ethnicity, socioeconomic status,…

Traditional drill and practice (TD) and incremental rehearsal (IR) are two flashcard drill instructional methods previously noted to improve word recognition. The current study sought to compare the effectiveness and efficiency of these two methods, as assessed by next day retention assessments, under 2 conditions (i.e., opportunities to respond…

In this study the effects of skill development on the eye movements of beginning adult sight-readers were examined, focusing on changes in the allocation of visual attention within metrical units as well as in the processing of larger melodic intervals. The participants were future elementary school teachers, taking part in a 9-month-long music…

Ainsworth's (2006) DeFT framework posits that different representations may lead learners to use different strategies. We wanted to investigate whether students use different strategies, and more broadly, different cognitive activities in diagrams vs. in running text. In order to do so, we collected think-aloud protocol and other measures from 91…

This longitudinal study investigates how the reading-related activities of mothers at home relate to the development of reading skills among their kindergarten children. A total of 1,529 children (5-to-6-year-olds) were tested on word reading twice, once at the beginning and once at the end of a kindergarten year. The mothers of the children (n =…

This article reports the evaluation of a 10-week phonologically-based literacy programme involving 10 children with Down syndrome (DS). At the outset, each child relied on a whole word method of reading with no apparent use of decoding strategies. The reading and phonological skills of the children were assessed twice prior to undertaking the…

The purpose of the current study was to examine academic and cognitive profiles of first graders who responded adequately and inadequately to intensive small-group reading intervention (Tier 2), as well as assess how these profiles differ based on the criteria used for classification of unresponsiveness. Nonresponders were identified using two…

Given that there are no spaces between words in Chinese, how words are segmented when reading is something of a mystery. Four Chinese characters, which either constituted one 4-character word or two 2-character words, were shown briefly to subjects. Subjects were quite accurate in reporting the 4-character word, but could usually only report the…

This study sought to determine the effects of explicit phonics instruction and sight word instruction on the letter-sound identification and word reading of 13- to 15-year-old English language learners in the eighth grade who were identified as having intellectual disabilities (ID). Using a randomized single-subject design, four Hispanic students…

This article reports findings from a literature review on literacy instruction for adolescents with significant cognitive disabilities. Nineteen empirical studies published between 1975 and 2011 were included in the review and analyzed based on characteristics of interventions. The results were examined to determine whether the state of research…

The complexity of words makes vocabulary development a multi-faceted process that presents challenges to early childhood educators, offers benefits to young learners, and must be supported through evidence-based strategies. All students, regardless of socio-economic status or background, need to make significant gains in receptive and expressive…

The authors used a multiple-baseline-across-behaviors (i.e., word lists) design to evaluate a computer-based flashcard intervention on automatic sight-word reading in a 4th-grade student with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities. Immediately after the intervention was applied to each of three lists of sight words, the student made rapid…

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of three computerized interventions on the reading skills of children with reading disabilities in Grade 2. This longitudinal intervention study included five test sessions over 1 year. Two test points occur before the intervention, and three afterwards. The last follow-up was conducted 1…