In early childhood classrooms, increased pressures to prioritize literacy acquisition skills have shifted learning environments from more open-ended and exploratory to regulatory in nature particularly in the field of literacy. Despite that research suggests the important role of exploratory and agentic literacy practices, the field is…

As more challenges occur to erase LGBTQ identities in the classroom, it is essential for educators to learn ways to become more inclusive. Using children's literature is a powerful way to include and center all identities. In this article, we share the journey and work of 1 s-grade teacher on a path to become more LGBTQ-inclusive with read-alouds.

Reading fluency has been a tenacious problem in our schools. Studies have addressed the national decline in reading fluency in elementary schools. Tennessee's data outlines a similar pattern of findings. Approximately one third of Tennessee students complete third grade without becoming fluent readers (Tennessee Department of Education, 2023). New…

The problem in this study was that first- and second-grade teachers are not using relevant and timely data, specifically running records, analysis of oral reading errors, self-correction rates, and word accuracy, as well as the student zone of proximal development (ZPD) in guided reading instruction. The purpose of this qualitative case study was…

Inference-making is a central element of successful reading comprehension, yet provides a challenge for beginning readers. Text decoding takes up cognitive resources which prevents beginning readers from successful inference-making and compromises reading comprehension. Listening does not require any decoding and could therefore offer a less…

The problem addressed through this study was that Grades 2-4 teachers in a New England urban elementary school district are challenged to remediate student learning loss in reading achievement. In the district, there was documented low reading proficiency for Grades 2-4 over the past 5 years, including before, during, and after the COVID-19…

The majority of U.S fourth graders are not proficient in reading. With lawmakers in some U.S. states enacting "Read by Grade 3" laws, it is important for teachers to be well prepared to teach reading to their students. The purpose of this study was to explore novice kindergarten through second grade (K-2) teachers' perspectives of their…

How can primary literacy teachers effectively identify, adapt, and incorporate developmentally appropriate technologies to support their students' reading development? This article reports results from a case study attempting to digitize a classroom literacy practice--close reading--for Year 2 students. It suggests that digital tools can…

Young children of Color from minoritized communities can co-author decodable stories using phonics skills they have been taught, their lived experiences, and home languages, including nondominant English languages, to develop decoding skills using student-generated decodable readers. While traditional and curricular decodable readers are used…

Background: To better understand the intricate science of reading development, both cognitive and affective factors must be taken into consideration. This developmental study aims to enrich the literature by exploring how reading motivation -- an affective factor -- contributes to reading comprehension in Chinese elementary schoolers, beyond…

This article explores the unique contributions of 2nd-grade emergent bilingual (EB) students' talk-turns vs. those of their teacher on students' expressions of comprehension during interactive read-aloud discussions in a pull-out classroom. They engaged in eight video-recorded, interactive read-aloud discussions across four books. This mixed…

In this study, the effect of dialogic reading practices on the development of fluent reading skills of primary school 2nd grade students under the guidance of teachers and parents was examined. In the study the quasi-experimental design of the quantitative research approach was applied. A total of 30 students (first experimental group: 10, second…

Reading literacy is a multidimensional construct in terms of text and reading processes. Much research has examined the divisibility of the processes underlying reading, but they have treated the rest of the construct as unitary. This study extends the examination of dimensionality to a neglected area in literacy studies. It tests reading models…

Purpose: Children progress from making grapheme-phoneme connections to making grapho-syllabic connections before whole-word connections during reading development (Ehri, 2005a). More is known about the development of grapheme--phoneme connections than is known about grapho-syllabic connections. Therefore, we explored the trajectory of syllable use…

Current reading research largely focuses on word reading. This study complements that focus by considering what children do when encountering unknown words and how that problem-solving changes over time. We used overlapping wave theory to describe how children who were having difficulty with reading changed their word-solving actions across nine…