This study will utilize a quantitative method to the explore the association between third grade students' home computer access and their ability to attain a proficient score on the Fall 2019 English Language Arts standardized state assessment. The secondary focus will explore the association between third grade students' home computer access and…

After the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, the disruption of in-person schooling has significantly affected many students including emergent bilingual students. Designed as an ethnographic study, this research study examines two Spanish-English dual language bilingual education teachers' implementation of translanguaging pedagogies and language…

Each fall at harvest time, young students in the authors' part of the Midwest visit apple orchards to learn more about the life cycle of plants. This tradition is one part of a larger unit centered on apples, integrating life science with language arts and social studies. The authors partnered with kindergarten teachers at several schools to…

Highly effective elementary teachers faced challenges to professional development which differed from their urban or suburban peers. With the increasing need for student proficiency in reading, strategies to help grow their engagement and motivation were necessary to investigate and apply to instructional habits. The purpose of this basic…

Many states and school districts in the United States use standardized test scores to compute annual measures of student achievement progress and then use school-level averages of these growth measures for various reporting and diagnostic purposes. These aggregate growth measures can vary consequentially from year to year for the same school,…

Scholars have theorized about the growing movement of teacher research, where school-based practitioners engage in systematic examinations of their own work. They have argued that teacher research challenges relationships of knowledge and practice, as teacher-researchers are likely to ask different questions and offer different perspectives…

As students' reading proficiency gaps persist across the United States, educational leaders have turned to alternative methods to foster effective instructional literacy practices. One approach to combat this dilemma is the implementation of scripted reading programs. The purpose of the study was to investigate the impact of scripted reading…

The problem was the low reading level and language arts performance of Hispanic American and African American elementary school students, compared to European American students. The problem was addressed because it affects students' academic achievement and overall education as they progress further in school. Teachers, administrators, and…

A pretest-training-posttest design assessed whether training to improve spatial skills also improved mathematics performance in elementary-aged children. First grade students (mean age = 7 years, n = 134) and sixth grade students (mean age = 12 years, n = 124) completed training in 1 of 2 spatial skills-spatial visualization or form…

Many recent articles have focused on reading instruction in kindergarten, but few have solicited the beliefs of the experts--kindergarten teachers. This study examined California teachers' perceptions of teaching reading to kindergarten students. Kindergarten teachers from northern to southern California were surveyed (N = 103). Teachers reported…

Although research illustrates the benefits of biliteracy, most bilingual students will not have access to a bilingual education program in which they receive official instruction in all their languages. However, the English language arts can become a space where any teacher can support students' biliteracy through purposeful curricular,…

This phenomenological study explored best practices to increase preservice teacher self-efficacy before the student teaching semester. The research was guided by this central inquiry and three sub-questions. Using a pre- and post-phenomenon survey instrument as well as an initial questionnaire and a final reflection, preservice teachers who were…

Background: Over the last twenty years, retention has increased in popularity with policymakers who are concerned with student achievement and aim to end social promotion (i.e., the practice of advancing a student to the next grade level although they have not yet met the academic expectations of their current grade level). Despite calls to expand…

Increasing numbers of children in Texas communities and across the U.S. are immigrants. One way to support students in exploring the history and contemporary topic of immigration through literacy is with inquiry, a teaching method that centers around students' questions, incorporates informational and narrative texts, and creates opportunities for…

Methods to handle ordered-categorical indicators in latent variable interactions have been developed, yet they have not been widely applied. This article compares the performance of two popular latent variable interaction modeling approaches in handling ordered-categorical indicators: unconstrained product indicator (UPI) and latent moderated…