Since the 2003-04 school year, Save the Children, U.S. Programs, has supported programming designed to improve reading skills among struggling students in rural areas. The literacy program includes both afterschool and in-school interventions with small groups of children. These are implemented by well-trained paraprofessionals and are designed to…

A battery of reading-related and reading measures was used to select samples of good (N = 30) and poor readers (N = 19) in Grade 1. Parents of these children completed a questionnaire about current and preschool home literacy practices and socio-economic status (SES). The 2 groups were compared with t tests and in a discriminant analysis. The t…

Given that previous findings on the social distribution of the effects of small classes have been mixed and inconclusive, in the present study I attempted to shed light on the mechanism through which small classes affect the achievement of low- and high-achieving students. I used data from a 4-year, large-scale, randomized experiment (project…

Data were analyzed from 641 children and their families in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development to test the hypotheses that in the early school years, mothers' and fathers' sensitive support for autonomy in observed parent-child interactions would each make unique predictions…

In the wake of "No Child Left Behind Act" (U.S. Department of Education, 2006), educational reforms focused on providing students with effective systematic instruction in reading skills have become a nationwide concern. Report findings from the National Reading Panel (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000),…

The purpose of this article is to examine whether there were improvements in the percentage of first-, second-, and third-grade students in Reading First (RF) schools in Michigan who performed at or above grade level on a standardized test of reading comprehension. The study reports results for 140 schools that participated in the RF initiative…

This study is the first randomized study of the impacts of the vocabulary instruction program Kindergarten PAVEd for Success (K-PAVE) (Hamilton and Schwanenflugel 2011) on low-income students in kindergarten and grade 1. The study has two components. The first component is a test of the impacts of one year of the K-PAVE vocabulary instruction in…

This study examined the long-term growth of reading skills following 1 year of supplemental 1st-grade code-oriented intervention provided by paraeducators. A group of 79 1st graders with reading skills averaging in the lowest quartile received explicit alphabetic and decoding instruction and were assessed postintervention and at 1-year intervals…

The universality of reading comprehension strategies across languages is a view generally accepted. What has not been clearly established, however, is the degree to which specific comprehension strategies are used by skilled L1 and L2 readers in the early grades. To investigate this issue, similarities and differences in the reading strategies of…

Research suggests that development of the alphabetic principle is a critical factor in learning to recognize words and becoming a successful reader. The alphabetic principle encompasses both the understanding that relationships exist between letters and sounds and the application of these relationships to reading words. This study investigated the…

Building on research showing the interdependence of language skills and reading proficiency, this study examined the effects of using the "Language Arts" strand of the "Reading Mastery Signature" 2008 series program as a supplement to non-Direct Instruction reading programs with English Language Learner (ELL) students.…

This action research study investigated first-graders' attitudes toward being a community of learners as a result of their involvement in constructing their classroom environment. The children's attitudes throughout the year were measured through student surveys, parent surveys, student reflections, teacher reflective journal entries, and informal…

This article reports findings from a longitudinal investigation of predictors of reading achievement for English-language learners receiving reading instruction in an English-language curriculum. Using the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) assessments, the study examined the predictive relationships of various measures of…

This research project investigated the effect of kindergarten time schedule on the reading achievement of an intact sample (n = 156), and three stratified sub-samples of high-risk (n = 53), mid-risk (n = 59), and low-risk learners (n = 44). Students entering kindergarten at five Reading First schools in September 2004 (n = 435) were randomly…

A latent growth model was used to investigate the longer term efficacy of phonics and integrated language arts instruction as well as amount of such instruction on children's reading development, using the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study data set (kindergarten through fifth grade). Type and amount of instruction were…