Early literacy learning in the primary grades creates the foundation of reading skills that determines the achievement for later literacy learning. The problem addressed was that the reading achievement of fourth-grade students in the United States of America has been decreasing since 2017. Early literacy learning requires effective instructional…

Wordless picture book reading is one of the common literacy practices for young children that happen at schools and homes. This dissertation of three studies explores the reader-text transactions between young children and wordless picture books in three ways: a content analysis of wordless books potentially featuring characters of color, a…

Throughout history, there have been a variety of circumstances that have forced students to be away from traditional school setting for an extended period. Natural disasters, pandemics, epidemics, or simply summer breaks cause students to spend time away from in person learning that may impact their academic growth momentum. Each time a school…

Future Forward is an early primary literacy program that pairs one-on-one tutoring with family engagement. The approach of Future Forward is informed by both systems theory and a school-family-community partnership model. With its school-family-community partnership approach, schools are not solely responsible for developing student literacy.…

Research suggests that school leaders' understanding and process of making sense of educational reform policies and/or laws is shaped by social, organizational, individual factors. This understanding can impact how a school leader understands and interprets the law/policy and ultimately may impact implementation actions. In 2016, Michigan's Read…

Limited influence of metacognition research in mainstream classrooms may stem from a lack of comprehensive pedagogy and/or inconsistent criteria assessing metacognition instruction. For this problem, an instrument designed for metacognition instruction in reading classes was examined. After a systematic and analytic review of broad literature,…

Teacher preparation institutions have been critiqued for insufficient emphasis on the science of reading. The authors argue that although improving early reading success and teacher preparation are both critical issues, today's "science of reading" discourse does not fully capture the complexity of teaching students to read. First, the…

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine elementary teachers' understanding of guided reading within a first-year implementation. The researcher conducted a survey and employed both a qualitative and quantitative data analysis. The convergent parallel design of this study allowed for a simultaneous analysis of qualitative and…

Learning to read is essential because reading provides a gateway for learning within and outside of school. African American boys continue to underperform in reading. A two-group pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design was used to determine the impact Response to Intervention and Instruction (RTI2) has on African American boys compared to white…

In this study, the effect of philosophy for children on primary school 4th-grade students' attitudes toward socioscientific issues (SSIs) and asking questions will be examined. A quasi-experimental design will be used in the study. In the study, 48 (experimental group [EG]: 24, control group [CG]: 24) primary school 4th-grade students studying in…

This article explores primary school teachers' views and practices in literacy instruction to support students' word knowledge development. This study provides insights into how primary school teachers with a deep interest in literacy understand and apply the literacy strategies they employ in their classrooms, and how previous professional…

Core reading instruction and interventions have differential effects based on student characteristics such as cognitive ability and pre-intervention skill level. Evidence for differential effect based on affective characteristics is scant and ambiguous; however, students with problem behavior are more often non-responsive to core reading…

The ongoing literacy crisis in the U.S. highlights an urgent need for effective, scalable literacy instruction. REED Charitable Foundation (RCF) is a non-profit organization that provides structured literacy training informed by Orton-Gillingham, along with ongoing professional coaching and comprehensive implementation support to help all students…

This study examined the effect of small class size intervention on student outcomes using reading achievement scores as measured by the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS), a standardized, norm-referenced test, while controlling for independent variables inclusive of students' gender, race, socioeconomic status (SES), and environment. This…

Good readers use various comprehension strategies to understand texts. However, many students lack knowledge on how to purposefully and effectively use text comprehension strategies. In this experimental study, the effectiveness of teaching text comprehension strategies on vocabulary and text comprehension at literal, inferential and evaluative…