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…

In the southeastern United States, many local school districts have mandated an increased use of instructional technology to address low reading proficiency among English language learners (ELLs). However, local district leaders and stakeholders concurred that additional research was needed to explore how teachers were using technology in their…

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…

Educators need to provide students with opportunities to engage with digital texts to support their development in becoming digitally literate (Plowman et al., 2012). The purpose of this practitioner research inquiry was to explore how teachers can support readers in the meaning-making process during read alouds with picture e-books, which contain…

Technology-assisted instruction has potential for helping students improve their reading skills. In the current studies, "PowerPoint" software was used to supplement teacher-led reading instruction for elementary-aged students with disabilities who struggled with phoneme blending to read words. The effectiveness of the intervention was…

Research shows that technology integration enables a stronger inclusion of digital literacies and engages individuals in a text format other than print. With more schools becoming 1:1, educators find themselves supporting curriculum standards in literacy with digital text despite shifts that occur with learning. In a basic qualitative research…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a technology-based intervention (LanguageLinks: Syntax Assessment and Intervention®; Laureate Learning Systems, Inc., 2013) to improve reading comprehension for d/Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) elementary students. The intervention was a self-paced, interactive program designed to…

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 aim of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of teachers' perspectives on promoting reading and writing for pupils with various linguistic backgrounds in grade 1. Focus group interviews were conducted with 17 teachers who work in preschool classes and in grade 1. The teachers' perspectives on reading and writing can be characterised as…

The purpose of this study is to determine the effectiveness of a tablet computer-aided intervention program for improving reading fluency. It also investigates the opinions of students and parents about this intervention by using skill- and performance-based techniques, which have been investigated qualitatively. Three students with a learning…

Since 1992, our nation's report card (NAEP) has indicated minimal improvement in reading. One of every three fourth grade students cannot read or understand text at a basic proficient level. At the same time, reading curricula publishers have approached reading improvement in similar ways. Recent advancements in technology allow educators to…

Curriculum Associates' "i-Ready® Personalized Instruction" ("i-Ready") is a supplemental, online personalized instruction program available for reading and mathematics. Prior research has indicated "i-Ready" has a positive impact on K-8 student achievement for students overall (e.g., Swain, Randel, & Norman…

Important strides have been made in the science of learning to read. Yet, many students still struggle to attain reading proficiency. This calls for sustained efforts to bridge theoretical insights with applied considerations about ideal pedagogy. The current study was designed to contribute to this conversation, namely by looking at the efficacy…

This study was designed to highlight how students best learn to learn to read, best practices of reading instruction, innovative resources, and effective instructional strategies. The aim of this dissertation was to address the problem of kindergarten through fourth grade students in the United States not reading on grade level. The purpose of…

Fluency Assessment and Benchmarking for Literacy in Education (FABLe) is the first mobile application being developed for the assessment of foundational literacy skills in India. FABLe passages are currently available in English for Grades 2, 3 and 4, with plans to expand to other Indian languages. FABLe is designed to administer curriculum-based…