In 2019, declines in reading achievement across Texas motivated changes for teacher recertification, which required 60-hour professional development in the science of teaching reading (STR). The problem this study addressed was the challenges K-Grade 3 reading teachers encountered when implementing the recently adopted Reading Academy content at a…

This report evaluates the effects of Lexia[TM] Core5[TM] Reading (Core5) -- a product of Lexia Learning Systems -- on the reading achievement of students in grades 3-5 during the 2021-2022 academic year. Core5 is a program that focuses on various student literacy skills, such as fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. This report represents the…

The purpose of this paper is to describe what we know and what we still need to learn about literacy intervention for children who experience significant difficulties learning to read. We reviewed 14 meta-analyses and systematic reviews of experimental and quasi-experimental studies published in the last decade that examined the effects of reading…

The aim of this study is to investigate the causes of reading problems experienced by third-grade students because of the instructional malpractices in education and develop a modeling with artificial neural networks. It was carried out according to the exploratory sequential model and consisted of two stages. In the qualitative part, a data pool…

Small-group instruction has the potential to support students' reading growth. Teachers can use knowledge of students' skill profiles to inform the types and amounts of instruction they provide; however, the extent to which teachers do this is largely unknown. Among first (n = 661) and third graders (n = 364), we investigated whether (1) teacher…

Automation of frequently used words is a key component in the development of reading fluency. However, acquiring fast word recognition skills is a serious challenge for many children in their early years of formal education. Lagging word recognition leads to general reading problems, as fluency is a vital prerequisite for text comprehension.…

The achievement gap is a historic and pervasive issue of social justice in education. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has further stalled student achievement in reading and math, amplifying the urgency for accelerating student learning to close the gap. The third grade is a critical year for literacy in education; if students have not mastered…

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,…

This paper investigates the implementation of a reading program designed for third grade elementary school classrooms in Austria. Using a mixed-methods approach, lesson types were identified, respective class compositions analyzed, and the effects on students' reading gains examined. The results show that the lesson types seem to reflect learner…

School districts in northeastern Tennessee have had persistently low proficiency rates in grade 3 English language arts, which were exacerbated by disruptions in schooling due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In response, the Niswonger Foundation, a technical assistance provider that supports these districts, developed Project On-Track, a high-dosage,…

The focus of this study was to examine the effective instructional practices, philosophies, values, and beliefs of highly effective reading teachers, as evidenced by their students' rate of reading growth over the course of one academic year across all demographic subgroups. Teacher instructional strategies, approaches to tier one and tier two…

In an urban city located in a Western state, the problem was that educators are challenged to implement reading interventions to support the reading needs of English Language learners (ELs) in third through fifth grade. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to investigate the perspectives of educators regarding the challenges they…

Problem Statement: As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, students were negatively impacted academically and social-emotionally (Kuhfeld et al., 2020). Preexisting academic inequities were exacerbated, especially for students of color, students with disabilities, multilingual learners, and those from low-income backgrounds (Kuhfeld et al., 2022).…

We present findings from the first cohort of third- and fourth-grade students with reading difficulties (128 students from 31 classrooms) who participated in a 2-year intervention examining the effects of a reading intervention with and without anxiety management. Using a randomized controlled trial, students were assigned to one of three…

Results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP; National Center for Education Statistics, 2020) have shown that despite efforts to raise the literacy skill levels of students in elementary school, the average reading scores for fourth-grade students in 2019 were still cause for concern. The NAEP data showed the reading scores in…