Students in the 3rd and 4th grade often encounter what has been called a reading "slump" when their class curriculums increasingly ask them to comprehend and learn from texts. Students are more likely to struggle if they have not been offered sufficient opportunities to build world and domain knowledge and engage in challenging…

Background: Although Zimbabwe has performed quite well on Grade 6 SACMEQ literacy assessments compared to other African countries, reading levels are generally low and there is little research on reading literacy in Zimbabwean primary schools. Aim: Grade 3 and 4 learners' reading comprehension (RC), accuracy and speed in oral reading fluency (ORF)…

Reading interventions that focus on metacognitive strategy instruction for elementary students reveal positive effects but also require extensive teacher training and significant oversight by the research team. In the current study, a more 'hands off' scalable approach to strategy instruction was tested, where initial teacher training and…

This action research study aimed to improve reading with understanding in a lower primary classroom in Fiji. Five emergent readers were selected through an examination of class running records. Peer observation, student worksheets, and class running records were utilized to collect data. The data analysis revealed that when teachers implement…

In this paper, we present iSTART-Early, an intelligent tutoring system that provides automated instruction and practice on higher-order reading comprehension strategies to 3rd and 4th grade students. iSTART-Early provides personalized, interactive, game-based strategy instruction and practice on comprehension strategies (i.e., Ask It, Reword It,…

The increasing number of students who lack proficient reading skills is well known in Germany, as well as globally. Students with learning disabilities (LD), problem behavior, and German as a second language (L2) may face even greater hurdles. However, it is essential for teachers to provide adequate support to maintain equal educational…

Students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) have difficulty with most reading skills, including reading comprehension. Improving reading comprehension skills requires efficient interventions that consider both meaning- and code-based skills simultaneously. Using a single-subject multiple-baseline design across participants, with alternating…

This study examined the comprehension skills and strategies presented in current reading textbooks used within the United States as a means of describing a contributor to the ecological component of reading. The ways in which comprehension skills and strategies are distributed across genres as well as connected to the National Reading Panel…

In this study, it was aimed to remediate the reading difficulties of a fifth-grade student having no physical or mental problem but experiencing reading difficulties and to develop his skills of reading fluency. For this purpose, the repeated reading, paired reading, and word repetition techniques were used in the research process. In addition,…

Speech technology (automated speech recognition -- ASR and text-to-speech) offers great promise in the field of automated literacy and reading tutors for children. Students in third and fourth grades struggle with generating longer strings of text on a QWERTY keyboard because they still "hunt and peck" for AQ1 the letters and symbols…

Highly effective elementary teachers faced challenges to professional development which differed from their urban or suburban peers. With the increasing need for student proficiency in reading, strategies to help grow their engagement and motivation were necessary to investigate and apply to instructional habits. The purpose of this basic…

Standardized assessments are focused on integrating knowledge from multiple sources and developing composed written responses. This requires the students to be able to read and comprehend on grade level, within the various subject areas (reading, math, science, and social studies), which are skills students with disabilities struggle to do. The…

Despite the importance placed on reading in the classroom, an unacceptable number of students lack the literacy skills essential to succeed in today's knowledge-based economy, putting them at greater risk of persistent unemployment and other forms of economic hardship. The problem is that public charter elementary (K-4) school intervention…

Some state mandated tests showed that many African American male students are not proficient readers. Teachers need to understand how to implement instructional strategies that will help enhance African American male students to read proficiently. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore elementary school teachers' perspectives…

This study investigated the relationship between teachers' comprehension monitoring strategies instruction and students' reading comprehension in the context of the Interactive Strategies Approach--Extended intervention (ISA-X, Gelzheiser et al., 2011). In the ISA-X, the teachers were encouraged to provide third and fourth grade students with…