Oral language is foundational to literacy. Because their language is under construction, emergent bilingual students have unique needs related to literacy development regardless of the language of instruction. Knowledge teachers gain through formative assessment of student oral language can guide decisions about literacy instruction. The purpose…

This phenomenological study examined 11 Title I early childhood educators' perceptions of Black male students' reading development related to the availability and representation of Black male protagonists in classroom library picture books in upstate South Carolina. From the perspective of two reading coaches and nine early childhood classroom…

The purpose of this Action Research study was to examine and improve professional dialogue and collaboration on student literacy among teachers at a Pre-Kindergarten-Grade 4 elementary school serving 460 students in a small rural college town. The project focused on teachers' collaborative processes in their efforts to address the literacy needs…

All students can benefit from a deeper understanding of how our language works. "Playing With Language" shows elementary school educators (K-6) how to think about, talk about, and manipulate language out of context. This cognitive skill set, known as metalinguistic awareness, is an important component of reading ability. This practical…

This study explored the similarities between the philosophies and techniques used by select high school athletic coaches and select elementary reading teachers. The study shows parallels between the psychology behind coaching methodology within high school athletics and differentiated instruction within the elementary reading classroom. The…

Illiteracy impacts the society of the United States socially, economically, physically and mentally. The inability to read has been linked to grim outcomes such as poverty, criminal activity, and poor health. By 2020, the term science of reading had gained traction in the educational realm rather than being isolated knowledge in the cognitive…

The authors report on substantial evidence documenting what matters in literacy teacher preparation and invite deans, department heads, program directors, literacy teacher educators, and literacy leaders to design programs that are supported by credible evidence of impact.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other researchers, the prevalence of Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) diagnoses among school-aged children has gained the attention of researchers. Due to the large amount of time children spend in the school context, researchers have found that teachers play a…

The differences in literacy education practices between China and the United States are often attributed to their different educational, sociocultural, and historical contexts. However, this sweeping view offers little to help literacy educators in both countries understand the beliefs behind literacy instructional practices and how different or…

LXD Research was engaged by 95 Percent Group to conduct a third-party, mixed-methods efficacy study of their 95 Phonics Core Program (95 PCP) to evaluate the impact on fourth and fifth grade literacy outcomes over the school year 2023-2024. LXD analyzed the formative assessment data from i-Ready, focusing on overall scale scores, subdomains, and…

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which traditional and alternative preparation programs differ in terms of their program components, as well as whether program type was related to different levels of self-efficacy in novice reading teachers. This exploratory study collected data from 83 novice elementary reading teachers in a…

This paper reports on a four-year study where campus leaders used collaborative inquiry twinned with generative dialogue to facilitate teacher growth in order to improve the teaching and learning of reading in a school where reading results were already strong. The paper contributes to the school improvement literature by capturing the two main…

Prior research has established preservice literacy teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning are often misguided and/or overly-simplistic, yet limited work has examined in what ways their in-the-moment teaching decisions align or misalign with what they believe. This qualitative study used deductive analysis methods to: (1) Identify three…

The authors share an activity in which two fifth-grade teachers and one sixth-grade teacher received book talk videos via Flipgrid from preservice literacy teachers and watched the videos with their students. Students responded with feedback and suggestions for how to better represent each book. The authors compiled and coded students' comments…

Serving both teachers and students in a hybrid literacy professional role requires thoughtful planning and reflection. In this article, the authors reflect on their work over the course of one school year to determine how to manage time effectively to combine the job descriptions of reading specialist and literacy coach. Strategies are presented…