Virtually every teacher works with at least some and sometimes many, students who struggle to read on grade level. Recent research has demonstrated success in improving the reading level of students in grades 4-9 with reading difficulties. This practice guide, developed by the What Works Clearinghouse™ (WWC) in conjunction with an expert panel,…

Primary students who struggle to read need incentive to redirect their mindset back onto the productive path of daily reading. Reading is daunting to the youngest readers who experience difficulties because the act of reading is difficult and tiresome. Effective reading engagement programs motivate these readers to read on a daily basis and…

Making inferences during reading is a critical standards-based skill and is important for reading comprehension. This article supports the improvement of reading comprehension for students with learning disabilities (LD) in upper elementary grades by reviewing what is currently known about inference instruction for students with LD and providing…

Significant numbers of adolescents and young adults do not adequately understand complex texts, impeding their school success, access to postsecondary learning, and opportunities within an increasingly competitive work environment. National data (National Assessment of Educational Progress [NAEP], 2015) have shown improvements among fourth- and…

The teaching approach described in this article was originally designed for kindergarten students who are at risk for reading disorders. In a 30-minute session, students practiced attending to and identifying the spelling patterns, pronunciations, and meanings of common morphological suffixes through listening activities, interactive book reading,…

There are research-based principles and practices that can be found in reading intervention research and applied in the middle grades to improve student outcomes. School leaders and teachers of all disciplines can consider using these strategies to provide effective reading instruction school-wide, as well as more intensive interventions for those…

This article shares the insights of a tutor as she works with a fourth-grade African American girl. For this case study, the authors use interactive read-alouds and writing samples to document the reading and writing events of this yearlong tutorial experience. They report on the power of critical literacy to engage a developing reader and improve…

This Project Information Package (PIP) has been designed to provide teachers with the information needed to teach in the Discovery through Reading Project, originally developed by the Clarkston School District in Michigan. The Project uses a modified tutorial approach for second- and third-grade students who encounter reading difficulties in their…

Discusses the literacy progress of an 11-year-old boy with deafness who had reading difficulties. Strategies teachers can use in the classroom are described, including using a variety of books, encouraging writing or dictating storybooks, keeping a file box of word cards, checking students' spelling, and using finger spelling. (CR)

Students in science classrooms are given numerous opportunities to read expository text in a variety of formats and for a variety of purposes. They read to solve a problem, understand the steps in an experiment, gain base knowledge about a concept, answer their own questions, compare their inquiry results with what others have found, expand their…

Among 26 techniques presented to assist elementary school students in four major areas of reading comprehension (literal, inferential, critical, and creative) are: visualization of a story's mood and setting; research and discussion about a story's author; and reflection on the significance of a historical story. (CB)

Problems that students may have because of their unfamiliarity with the passage structures used in many social studies textbooks are discussed. Passage structures are defined as certain rhetorical structures such as compare/constrast, general/specific, and sequence. A teaching strategy for helping students overcome these difficulties is included.…

Reflecting the large amount of evidence linking children's progress in learning to read to their phonological awareness, this manual presents a program of phonological and phonological linkage activities, a set of reproducible record sheets, and 54 picture sheets used in the program. After an introduction and guide to the program, the manual…

Intended to help students overcome their reading and spelling difficulties, this booklet describes teaching reading and spelling using the notion of five types of English words and presents extensive word lists to teach each type of word. The five types of words discussed in the booklet are "simple" (words that follow regular phonic…

This brief focuses on the word identification strategy component of the Strategic Instruction Model (SIM) and reviews recent research showing the effectiveness of this strategy for secondary students with disabilities. The word identification strategy is intended to help struggling readers decode and identify unfamiliar words and is based on the…