Mississippi elementary schools using the Success for All reading program have once again made outstanding gains on the Mississippi Curriculum Test (MCT) reading scale. Students in grades 2-5 in Success for All schools gained 7.8 percentage points in students scoring at proficient or advanced from 2002 to 2004. Mississippi students as a whole…

Prosodic reading, or reading with expression, is considered one of the hallmarks of fluent reading. The major purpose of the study was to learn how reading prosody is related to decoding and reading comprehension skills. Suprasegmental features of oral reading were measured in 2nd- and 3rd-grade children (N = 123) and 24 adults. Reading…

Mathematics textbook publishers often include recommended tradebooks to be used in mathematics instruction. Teachers, however, remain unaware of the criteria used by the publishers when making their recommendations. Using Schiro's (1997) standards for assessing mathematics in children's literature, this inquiry assessed the quality of 127…

Longitudinal data for 167 low-income children were analyzed to examine associations between family educational involvement during kindergarten, children's feelings about literacy, and children's literacy achievement from kindergarten through fifth grade. The promotive effect of family educational involvement for feelings about literacy and…

This study examined the extent to which literacy is a unitary construct, the differences between literacy and general language competence, and the relative roles of teachers and students in predicting literacy outcomes. Much of past research failed to make a distinction between variability in outcomes for individual students and variability for…

Algebra instruction has traditionally been postponed until adolescence because of historical reasons (algebra emerged relatively recently), assumptions about psychological development ("developmental constraints" and "developmental readiness"), and data documenting the difficulties that adolescents have with algebra. Here we…

In a 3-year longitudinal study, the authors examined the effect of Direct Instruction (DI) on students' reading achievement, teacher perceptions, nature of the classroom, and special education referral rate. Urban and suburban students completed the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests in the fall of Grade 1 and spring of Grades 1, 2, and 3. Teachers…

Why are children off task? What is going on in classrooms where a majority of children are off task? In this study we analyzed primary-grade classroom literacy instruction in which there was considerable off-task behavior. Using Turner and Paris's frame for understanding student motivation in the classroom, we analyzed 73 activity settings where…

In this study, the authors sought to examine the determinants of psychological well-being and risk in First Nation students residing in their home community. The participant sample was drawn from students who resided in a First Nation community and were served by their tribal council in a central western province. All students, Grades 1 to 12, who…

The Simple View of Reading states that reading comprehension is the product of word recognition and listening comprehension. Whereas much research has focused on word recognition accuracy, recent attention has been directed toward word recognition fluency. The current study investigated whether a separate fluency component should be added to the…

This document was prepared to provide guidance to "Reading First" coaches and teachers regarding alternative lesson structures for providing small group, differentiated instruction to students in grades K-3 within "Reading First" schools in Florida. The motivation for the development of this document stemmed from specific…

This report presents findings from the third and final year of the Reading First Impact Study (RFIS), a congressionally mandated evaluation of the federal government's initiative to help all children read at or above grade level by the end of third grade. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 established Reading First (RF) and mandated its…

In this technical report, the authors describe the development alternate forms of three types of early literacy measures as part of a comprehensive progress monitoring literacy assessment system developed in 2006 for use with students in Kindergarten through fourth grade. They begin with a brief overview of the two conceptual frameworks underlying…

Increasingly, elementary schools across America are adopting prereferral intervention models that follow a structured problem-solving consultation process to reduce referrals to special education and to improve student academic outcomes. One feasible and affordable systems-level solution for a school that must deliver reading interventions of high…

Meeting the needs of mathematically talented elementary students has always been a real challenge due to the lack of appropriate curricular resources and training for teachers. Mathematics is not generally a strength area for elementary or gifted/talented teachers; rather, their talents and interests often lie in the language arts realm. This is…