For educators, the content of the curriculum really is like oxygen: it is the necessary precondition for improving schools, closing the achievement gap, engaging parents, and preparing teachers. However, when educators take the content of the curriculum for granted, they lose opportunities to coordinate and collaborate. Good curriculum instruction…

General outcome measurement, a specific type of formative evaluation, can be used to assess progress toward long-term academic goals. Curriculum-based measurement is a widely used type of general outcome measurement. When used to develop local norms, curriculum-based measurement data are helpful in making individual student and systems-level…

This research investigated the immediate and long-term effects of a Tier 2 intervention for beginning readers identified as having a high probability of reading failure using a randomized control trial. First-grade participants (n = 123) were randomly assigned either to a 25-session intervention targeting key reading components, including…

The author examined the effectiveness of 2 fluency-oriented reading programs on improving reading fluency for an ethnically diverse sample of second-grade students. The first approach is Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction (S. A. Stahl & K. Heubach, 2005), which incorporates the repeated reading of a grade-level text over the course of an…

The structure of lessons where teachers integrated the digital literacies is examined here. Twelve graduate teachers participating in an after-school practica were observed over a six-week period. This manuscript identifies the structure of their lessons and describes the kinds of digital literacies children learned when completing them. Teachers…

The purpose of this study is to contribute to efforts to improve methods for gathering and analyzing data from classroom observations in early literacy. The methodological approach addresses current problems of reliability and validity of classroom observations by taking into account differences in teachers' uses of instructional actions (e.g.,…

This article shares an oral reading practice that develops children's fluency skills, with a particular emphasis on performance reading and prosody. The authors share their experiences with Fluency Idol! as a way to engage young children by tapping into pop culture. The practice emphasizes repeated readings, feedback, practice, and…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of a computer-based multimedia software program on the oral reading fluency of at risk second-grade learners. The study determined if a cause-effect relationship existed between one factor, "the independent variable" and a second factor, the dependent variable. A Two-way…

Brief experimental analyses (BEA) have been used to identify reading interventions to increase the oral reading fluency (ORF) of students having difficulty learning to read. Four interventions, repeated reading, listening passage preview, phrase drill, and contingent reinforcement were implemented with four elementary aged students performing…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects that a self-monitoring strategy, plus a tactile prompting device, had upon the on-task and oral reading fluency behaviors of students with emotional and/or behavioral disabilities in the general education setting when used during whole group reading instruction. A multiple-baseline across pairs…

This study investigated the adequacy of an expanded simple view of reading (SVR) framework for English language learners (ELLs), using mediation modeling approach. The proposed expanded SVR included reading fluency as an outcome and phonological awareness and naming speed as predictors. To test the fit of the proposed mediation model, longitudinal…

"Reading Mastery" is designed to provide explicit reading instruction to students in grades pre-K-5. One of several Direct Instruction curricula from McGraw-Hill, "Reading Mastery" is available in two versions: (1) "Reading Mastery Classic" (for grades pre-K-2) aims to help beginning readers identify letter sounds,…

Over the past few decades, reading assessment has been pushed to the forefront of the national discussion about education. The most recent reauthorizations of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1994, 2001) made assessment a priority as administrators and teachers are attempting to meet increasing accountability standards, but measuring…

The present study investigated whether young Latino dual-language learners' 2-year English reading growth varied over time according to their initial overall oral English ability. We followed 41 Latino children for 2 years. We tested overall oral English at the beginning of the study and administered multiple curriculum-based reading assessments…

Some students are exiting first grade reading at less than adequate fluency rates at one rural elementary school. Poor fluency can lead to literacy problems later in their education. An appropriate system to address each student's fluency needs will help teachers to better serve students. A framework based on the theories of Rasinski's fluency…