David Stephens, a 4th grade teacher in Washington State, was preparing a lesson plan about desert wildlife (all names are pseudonyms). He was planning on assigning his students the chapter book, "Desert Giant: The World of the Saguaro Cactus." The students had divergent knowledge about the topic. For example, Maryam had grown up in…

Prior research supports the need for elementary-aged students with reading difficulties (RDs) to receive explicit systematic small-group evidence-based reading instruction. Yet for many students, simply receiving evidence-based reading instruction in a small-group setting is insufficient to reach the progress milestones needed to meet grade-level…

Despite a marked increase in the volume of research investigating issues about reading interventions for students with ASD (e.g., Bailey and Arciuli, Rev J Autism Dev Disord 7(2):127-150, 2020; Chiang and Lin, Focus Autism Other Dev Disab 22(4):259-267, 2007), very few studies have examined the current reading practices experienced by children…

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,…

Teaching vocabulary and reading comprehension during social studies instruction is critical for reading development and the acquisition of content knowledge. This study systematically investigated how elementary teachers integrate vocabulary and reading comprehension instruction during social studies teaching, as well as the extent to which this…

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…

The purpose of this causal-comparative study was to gain insight into whether teaching fractions improves teachers' understanding of fractions. University master's students (n = 25) conducted tutoring focused on fraction magnitude using number line representations across 39 sessions (3 per week) at grades 3-5. The contrast condition, 17 master's…

Students who struggle with reading have particular trouble with expository text. Instruction in text structures has been shown to be effective for improving expository reading comprehension. However, few studies have been conducted specifically with upper elementary aged struggling readers. To address these issues, we developed a new intervention,…

Understanding the efficacy of evidence-based reading practices delivered in the Tier 1 (i.e. general classroom) setting is critical to successful implementation of multi-tiered systems, meeting a diverse range of student learning needs, and providing high quality reading instruction across content areas. This meta-analysis presents evidence on the…

This study evaluated the feasibility of the Knowledge, Language, and Inquiry (K.L.I.) intervention, designed to support Grades 3-5 multilingual students classified as English learners (ML-ELs) in building content knowledge, language skills, and reading comprehension through inquiry-based small-group instruction. Feasibility was examined across…

Aim: We conducted two separate but related multiple baseline with alternating treatment single-case design studies to investigate the effect of the same reading intervention for students with autism spectrum disorder being implemented under different conditions. Method: We conducted a researcher-implemented study in a public school (Study 1) and a…

Few studies investigate how teacher discourse moves relate to subsequent student discourse moves in real-time small-group reading instruction with multilingual learners (MLLs). Grounded in sociocultural theory and classroom discourse research, this study examines how fourth-grade MLLs engage in reasoning discourse during text-based discussions. We…

This study investigated the presence of word reading difficulties in a sample of students in Grades 1-4 (n = 357) identified with language and reading comprehension difficulties. This study also examined whether distinct word reading and listening comprehension profiles emerged within this sample and the extent to which these groups varied in…

Students with co-occurring reading difficulties and inattention tend to respond to reading interventions less favorably than those with reading difficulties without inattention. However, there is limited research on how to increase student engagement during reading instruction for these students. To support the engagement of students with…

This study examined the differential effects of Strategies for Reading Informational Text and Vocabulary Effectively (STRIVE) on the vocabulary, reading comprehension, and content learning among 4,757 fourth-grade students with and without disabilities. Schools were assigned to one of three conditions: researcher-supported professional development…