When observing and consistently hearing about the obstacles our current public educational system faces, many are left wondering what can be done to produce genuine, significant, and continuous improvement. Upon deeper analysis of educational systems, one can see that many areas need system improvement. SOAR School (pseudonym) is a Pre-K-5 school…

The focus of this study was to examine the effective instructional practices, philosophies, values, and beliefs of highly effective reading teachers, as evidenced by their students' rate of reading growth over the course of one academic year across all demographic subgroups. Teacher instructional strategies, approaches to tier one and tier two…

As an initial step of a larger grant-funded project, this pilot study examined how providing preschool teachers in low socio-economic urban areas with a traditional professional development workshop and subsequent coaching on dialogic reading (DR) strategies affected their storybook reading. Effects on children's receptive and expressive language…

Research has indicated that reading aloud to young students can enhance their foundational reading skills and their reading motivation, but such research has been lacking in African contexts. In this study, we assessed the efficacy of story read-aloud lessons in improving students' foundational reading skills in Nigeria. The experiment took place…

Reading is key in all aspects of education and improving reading instruction continues to be an issue of national focus. Although there is considerable research on the nature of teaching reading from a variety of viewpoints, little has focused on student perspectives, particularly at younger levels. The purpose of this case study is to describe…

This article reports the results of a randomized controlled trial that replicated and extended research on the Targeted Reading Intervention (TRI), a professional development program for kindergarten and first-grade teachers in low-wealth rural schools that helps enhance literacy skills of struggling readers. In weekly webcam coaching sessions,…

It is imperative that students learn to read in the early grades, yet many fail to do so in developing countries. Early grade reading interventions have emerged as a common means to attempt to address this problem. This paper presents a definition of early grade reading interventions as interventions that employ a combination of five components:…

Reading challenges are still evident for more than 90 million adults in the United States who are functioning at the lowest levels of literacy (United States Department of Education, 2004). Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI) is one program designed to address these educational needs. The purpose of this quantitative study was to investigate the…

The Texas Literacy Initiative (TLI) was first implemented in Austin Independent School District during the 2012-2013 school. This report summarizes Spring 2014 survey responses from teachers at TLI campuses.

Designed to help preservice and inservice teachers use assessments to identify problems and employ appropriate strategies to help their students become better readers, this text includes 12 case studies that detail children's literacy struggles. The cases are embedded within a framework of research-based instructional interventions related to best…