Fluency, vocabulary building, making inferences, expanding background knowledge, and metacognitive thinking are reading skills taught in schools across the country. Which of these do ELA teachers consider to be most important? It is not known which of these five areas Western Pennsylvania teachers believe has the most impact on comprehension…

Many studies have demonstrated the crucial role of vocabulary in predicting reading performance in general. More recent work has indicated that one particular facet of vocabulary (its depth) is more closely related to language comprehension, especially inferential comprehension. On this basis, we developed a training application to specifically…

Building vocabulary knowledge, especially breadth and depth of word meanings, is a crucial step in assisting students to read and comprehend print independently. A large body of research has documented the low reading achievement levels of a number of Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students. The goal of the present study was to examine the effects…

Stealth assessment has been successfully embedded in educational games to measure students' learning in an unobtrusive and supportive way. This study explored the possibility of applying stealth assessment in a digital reading platform and sought to identify potential in-system indicators of students' digital learning outcomes. Utilizing the user…

With the release of the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and 2016 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) results, concerns that reading scores of U.S. students have remained flat for the past decade have surfaced again along with suggestions about the source of this problem and how it might be remedied. The…

Research shows that peer interaction supports learners in understanding and applying new vocabulary, developing reading skills, and improving reading comprehension. Teachers play a vital role in supporting peer learning, yet we know little about teachers' perspectives on the value of peer learning. This study explores the processes through which…

Reading words and developing larger vocabularies are critical parts of reading proficiency, but these checkpoints do not have significance until young students grasp the meaning behind words. While teachers and the school culture can improve early reading proficiency, legislatures and state education agencies can support such efforts by…

This study draws on the application of sociocultural theory to second-language learning and teaching to examine the impact of a design-based research approach on teacher development and literacy instruction to English-language learners (ELLs). Design-based research methodology was employed to derive theoretical suppositions relating to the process…

The effects of a voluntary summer reading intervention with and without a parent training component were evaluated with a sample of low-income Latino children from language minority families. During the last month of 4th grade, 370 children were pretested on a measure of reading comprehension and vocabulary and were randomly assigned to (a) a…

For the large population of school-age English language learners in California and the United States, the challenge of learning a second language while learning academic content is formidable. Learning to read English skillfully is key to their success. Reading instruction focused on development of oral text-reading fluency has shown strong…

Over a quarter of 8th-grade students and more than one-third of 4th graders do not read well enough to understand important concepts and acquire new knowledge from grade-level text. For students with learning disabilities, the numbers are more troubling. This article describes features of evidence-based instruction for students who continue to…