Educational psychologists can play a number of roles within education settings. They are often called upon to assist with the assessment and treatment of disability issues, student behaviour and mental health problems, parent and teacher liaison, and counselling, to name a few. Less frequently pursued is an active role in establishing and…

The term "balanced literacy" was popularized in the mid-1990s to describe a middle ground in terms of text selection, instruction, skills, and strategies. The intention was to merge the promising elements of whole language and phonics. Interactions with educators and literacy leaders across the country currently suggest that a term that…

The purpose of morphology instruction is to: (1) support accurate and fluent polysyllabic (poly = more than one) reading; (2) improve spelling of polysyllabic words; and (3) aid vocabulary development and reading comprehension. Thus, instruction needs to move from part (morphemes) to whole (polysyllabic words). This guide includes information…

Emergent Bilinguals (EB), particularly those of Latino descent, who have a moderate intellectual disability (ID) are arguably one of the most underserved and under researched populations. Although there has been an increase of evidence-based practices for both EBs and students with ID, there are still a limited number of empirical studies of EBs…

Read It Again! PreK (RIA) is a whole-class, teacher-implemented intervention that embeds explicit language and literacy instruction within the context of shared book reading and has prior evidence of supporting the language and literacy skills of preschool children. We conducted a conceptual replication to test its efficacy when implemented in…

Many urban schools, throughout the United States of America, experience major academic challenges in preparing Kindergarten students to become proficient readers, to achieve academic success throughout the formal educational process. The purpose of this research study was to examine how the implementation of the Wilson Fundations Program, in an…

Culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) which provides a general framework for working with culturally and linguistically diverse learners has become the reality in the contemporary elementary classroom in Canada and around the world. This theory-to-practice article presents five research-based teaching practices which make a tangible impact on…

Many adolescent students who are learning English and are identified with learning disabilities have difficulties with both reading comprehension and English language proficiency. In the secondary grades, these students have fewer opportunities to improve their reading comprehension and to learn from a range of disciplinary texts. To address these…

From 2005-2009, the state determined that the Williams School had made no progress in raising its poor performance on the state English language arts test. In the fall of 2009, the state awarded literacy partnership grants to provide professional development to low-performing schools, and the Williams School partnered with our institution of…

Students with intellectual disability often receive limited explicit instruction in comprehension strategies. The current study evaluated the effects of a multi-component literacy intervention designed to improve comprehension of high school students with moderate intellectual disability on adapted expository science text. The multi-component…

We examined the developmental relationship between cognitive-linguistic skills (nonverbal IQ, vocabulary, phonological awareness, rapid automatised naming [RAN]), home environment factors (direct teaching, shared book reading, access to literacy resources, parents' expectations, family's socioeconomic status [SES]), and pinyin letter knowledge in…

This article presents a summation of the field's past contributions to understanding the nature of undergraduate reading practices and meaning making processes in relation to contemporary perspectives of disciplinary literacies. In presenting a synthesis of over 40 studies across interdisciplinary journals, the goal was to construct a generalized…

Kindergarten teachers face the challenge of balancing traditional developmental programming and contemporary academic standards. In classrooms following a play-based learning framework, academic content such as literacy is to be taught within children's play. However, educators have reported conceptual and practical challenges with integrating…

Academically engaging adolescents with learning difficulties continues to be a challenge for teachers and education authorities around the world. This paper reports on one part of a broader study to address the impasse present between research and practice in meeting the needs of adolescents with learning difficulties. Drawing on the mounting…

Interactive Writing (IW) is a powerful support for language and literacy development; however, its emphasis on using oral language to construct written language can present challenges for deaf/Deaf and hard of hearing (d/Dhh) students due to their unique and diverse language experiences. Teachers (n = 14) using Strategic and Interactive Writing…