Reading fluency is commonly defined as reading accurately at a quick rate with appropriate prosody--a simple sounding definition. In fact, this definition hides complex processes and skills needed to produce the seemingly effortless performance of a fluent reader. Using both theory and empirical research, the presence and role of underlying…

This study examined the effectiveness of repeated readings in four second-grade classrooms in two urban elementary schools in Northwest Ohio. As determined by the Ohio Department of Education, 75% of the students in each building must score at or above the proficient level. For the 2008-2009 school year Building A, a school within one of Ohio's…

Federal legislation has prescribed the increased use of statewide achievement tests as the culmination of a student's knowledge and ability at the end of a grade level; however, schools need to be able to predict those who are at-risk of performing poorly on these high-stakes tests. Three studies served to identify a means of predicting statewide…

Rates of agreement among alternative definitions of reading disability and their 1- and 2-year stabilities were examined using a new measure of agreement, the affected-status agreement statistic. Participants were 288,114 first through third grade students. Reading measures were "Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills" Oral…

Data from two different sites were used to examine how exposure to a highly academic curriculum is related to growth in beginning literacy and early reading skills from kindergarten through the end of third grade. In one site students in one school used the Direct Instruction (DI) program, "Reading Mastery (RM)", from kindergarten…

Few studies have examined whether attention can be improved with training, even though attention difficulties adversely affect academic achievement. The present study was a randomized-controlled trial evaluating the impact of Computerized Attention Training (CAT) and Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI) on attention and academic performance in 77…

The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to examine the effect of task-focused behaviour on reading fluency, spelling and comprehension; and (b) to examine the role of the different literacy skills in subsequent task-focused behaviour. Two hundred and seven Finnish-speaking children were followed from preschool until their fourth year at school…

In this study, we examined the relationship of growth trajectories of oral reading fluency, vocabulary, phonological awareness, letter-naming fluency, and nonsense word reading fluency from 1st grade to 3rd grade with reading comprehension in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades. Data from 12,536 children who were followed from kindergarten to 3rd grade…

This study examined the respective contribution of verbal working memory, which was operationalized as immediate digit and sentence recall, to bilingual children's reading fluency and comprehension in the first language (L1) and second language (L2). Fifty children from two international sites took part in this study: One group was English-Korean…

An estimated 75% of students who are poor readers in third grade continue to be lower achieving readers in ninth grade. The National Reading Panel has identified fluency as a prominent cause of reading comprehension problems which ultimately affect overall reading development. The purpose of this study was to test the theoretical framework of…

Three second-grade students at-risk for reading failure participated in an adult-directed repeated reading program that integrated isolated word reading practice, unison reading, error correction, and performance cueing and feedback procedures. During each intervention session, the participants practiced five difficult words key to a first-grade…

As schools implement response to intervention to identify and serve students with learning difficulties, it is critical for educators to know how to evaluate screening measures. In the present study, "Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills" Oral Reading Fluency was used to compare the differential decisions that might occur in…

The current study examined the quality of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) across a sample of second-grade English Language (EL) learners with varying degrees of English proficiency (e.g., students with beginning, early intermediate, intermediate, early advanced, and advanced levels). DIBELS Oral Reading Fluency…

Although the transparency of a writing system is hypothesized to systematically influence the cognitive skills associated with reading development, results of cross-language investigations are inconsistent and usually do not address this issue in a developmental context. We therefore investigated the cognitive dynamics of reading fluency of…

The purpose of this study was to determine the relation between word recognition errors made at a letter-sound pattern level on a word list and on a curriculum-based measurement oral reading fluency measure (CBM-ORF) for typical and struggling elementary readers. The participants were second, third, and fourth grade typical and struggling readers…