Narration has been shown to be a foundational skill for literacy development in school-age children. Elementary teachers routinely conduct classroom lessons that focus on reading decoding and comprehension, but they rarely provide instruction in oral narration (Hall et al., 2021). This multisite randomized controlled trial was designed to…

Two potential pathways for improving reading outcomes for students with reading disabilities are presented: (a) systematically integrating self-regulation instructional practices within reading interventions and (b) aligning small-group reading intervention with core reading instruction to reduce the pressure on the executive system. Two separate…

This within-subjects experimental study investigated the relative effects of word reading and word meaning instruction (WR+WM) compared to word-reading instruction alone (WR) on the accuracy, fluency, and word meaning knowledge of 4th-5th graders with dyslexia. We matched word lists on syllables, phonemes, frequency, number of definitions, and…

Narration has been shown to be a foundational skill for literacy development in school-age children. Elementary teachers routinely conduct classroom lessons that focus on reading decoding and comprehension, but they rarely provide instruction in oral narration (Hall et al., 2021). This multisite randomized controlled trial was designed to…

To address the needs of a diverse group of students with reading difficulties, a majority of researchers over the last decade have designed and implemented multicomponent reading interventions (MCRIs) that provide instruction in multiple areas of reading yielding mixed results. The current study evaluates whether students' baseline word reading…

We present findings from the first cohort of third- and fourth-grade students with reading difficulties (128 students from 31 classrooms) who participated in a 2-year intervention examining the effects of a reading intervention with and without anxiety management. Using a randomized controlled trial, students were assigned to one of three…

This study investigated the word reading and listening comprehension difficulties of fourth-grade students with significant reading comprehension deficits and the cognitive difficulties that underlie these weaknesses. Latent profile analysis was used to classify a sample of fourth-grade students (n = 446) who scored below the 16th percentile on a…

This study examined the effects of a small group intervention targeting paraphrasing and text structure instruction on the main idea generation and reading comprehension of students with reading disabilities in Grades 4 and 5. Students (N = 62) were randomly assigned to receive the Tier 2-type intervention or business-as-usual instruction.…

The role of executive function (EF) in the reading process, and in those with reading difficulties, remains unclear. As members of the Texas Center for Learning Disabilities, we review multiple perspectives regarding EF in reading and then summarize some of our recent studies of struggling and typical readers in grades 3-5. Study 1a found that a…

Inadequate responders demonstrate significant risk for learning disabilities. Previous investigations of the cognitive profiles of inadequate and adequate responders have not included measures of executive functions (EFs), which have well-documented associations to reading comprehension. We evaluated EF performance on a common factor comprised of…

This article presents findings from a quasiexperimental study examining the effects of a Tier 2 intervention aligned to Tier 1 instruction, a nonaligned Tier 2 intervention, and a business-as-usual (BAU) comparison on the content knowledge, vocabulary, and reading outcomes of fourth-grade struggling readers. In the aligned condition, teachers were…

Understanding the efficacy of evidence-based reading practices delivered in the Tier 1 (i.e. general classroom) setting is critical to successful implementation of multi-tiered systems, meeting a diverse range of student learning needs, and providing high quality reading instruction across content areas. This meta-analysis presents evidence on the…

Attention is correlated with reading, but the extent to which behavioral ratings and sustained attention relate to reading skills is unclear. We assessed 245 fourth and fifth grade struggling readers (mean age = 10.3 years) on behavioral ratings of attention, sustained attention, and reading over a school year. Contributions of behavioral ratings…

This study investigated the extent to which problem behaviors were factors associated with response to a year-long multicomponent reading intervention for fourth- and fifth-grade students with reading difficulties. Students scoring [less than or equal to]85 standard score on the "Test of Silent Reading Efficiency and Comprehension" (n =…

This study examines the initial word reading performance of fourth-grade struggling readers and the extent to which differing levels of word reading performance at pretest influenced their response to reading interventions. A large group of students with significant reading comprehension difficulties (N = 481) were classified into three clusters…