This cross-sectional study measures decoding and fluent reading skills of a random sample of 250 first- through third-grade students attending a high-SES school. Growth was compared between proficient and struggling readers with results showing the latter group significantly behind their higher attaining peers on all measures. When student…

The purpose of this study was to examine whether group-based differences exist in word- and text-level reading in a clinical sample of students with dyslexia, and to shed light on the cognitive processes supporting these essential skills. Second- through seventh-grade students were administered a battery of standardized measures of cognitive…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between oral language, literacy skills, age, and dialect density (DD) of African American children residing in two different geographical regions of the United States (East Coast and Midwest). Method: Data were obtained from 64 African American school-age children between the…

Although instruction has been shown to be effective at increasing vocabulary knowledge and comprehension, factors most important for promoting the acquisition of novel vocabulary are less known. In addition, few vocabulary studies have utilized models that simultaneously take into account child-level, word-level, and instructional factors to…

Oral reading fluency (ORF) has been widely used as a measure of students' overall reading competency. However, accuracy, or words correct per minute (wcpm), derived from ORF testing may not reveal all aspects of a student's reading abilities. The present study investigated the oral reading miscue patterns of students with and without learning…

This study rank ordered the contributive importance of several predictors of listening comprehension for third, seventh, and tenth graders. Principal components analyses revealed that a three-factor solution with fluency, reasoning, and working memory components provided the best fit across grade levels. Dominance analyses indicated that fluency…

We examined the developmental relationships between home literacy environment (parent teaching, shared book reading) and emergent literacy skills (phonological awareness, letter knowledge, vocabulary, rapid naming speed) in kindergarten, reading accuracy and fluency in Grade 1, and reading comprehension in Grades 2 and 3 in a sample of Canadian…

The "Read Naturally"[R] program is a supplemental reading program that aims to improve reading fluency, accuracy, and comprehension of elementary and middle school students using a combination of texts, audio CDs, and computer software. The program uses one of four products that share a common fluency-building strategy: "Read…

Over the past few decades, reading assessment has been pushed to the forefront of the national discussion about education. The most recent reauthorizations of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1994, 2001) made assessment a priority as administrators and teachers are attempting to meet increasing accountability standards, but measuring…

The "Read Naturally[R]" program is a supplemental reading program that aims to improve reading fluency, accuracy, and comprehension of elementary and middle school students using a combination of texts, audio CDs, and computer software. The program uses one of four products that share a common fluency-building strategy: "Read…

The purpose of the study was to investigate (a) the prevalence of word callers in elementary school, (b) the accuracy of teachers' word caller nominations, and (c) teachers' conceptualization of reading fluency and reading comprehension. To this end, 2 cross-sectional studies of second- and third- (N = 868) and of third- and fifth-grade (N = 202)…

The majority of work on the double-deficit hypothesis (DDH) of dyslexia has been done at the letter and word levels of reading. Key research questions addressed in this study are (a) do readers with different subtypes of dyslexia display differences in fluency at particular reading levels (e.g., letter, word, and connected text)? and (b) do…

This study examines (a) how rapid automatized naming (RAN) speed components--articulation time and pause time--predict reading accuracy and reading fluency in Grades 2 and 3, and (b) how RAN components are related to measures of phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge, and speed of processing. Forty-eight children were administered RAN…