Educational outcomes across multiple countries show large gaps between children's grade level curricular expectations and the actual learning levels of children. This paper discusses findings from an early grades literacy study and attempts to explore factors that potentially improve the English language learning results of Grades 3 and 4 learners…

In Finland, schools' effectiveness in fostering the development of transversal skills is evaluated through large-scale learning to learn (LTL) assessments. This article presents how LTL skills--general cognitive competences and learning-related motivational beliefs--develop during primary school and how they predict pupils' CPS skills at the end…

Classmates can influence a student's academic achievement through immediate interactions (e.g., academic help, positive attitudes toward reading) or by sharing tangible or intangible family resources (books, stories of foreign travel). Multilevel analysis of 141,019 fourth-grade students' reading achievements in 33 countries showed that…

The longitudinal prediction of reading problems from fourth grade to sixth grade was investigated with a sample of 173 students. Reading problems at the end of sixth grade were defined by significantly below average performance (= 15th percentile) on reading factors defining word reading, fluency, and reading comprehension. Sixth grade poor reader…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of two innovative, art-and-literature-based approaches to teaching writing (Picturing Writing: Fostering Literacy Through Art and Image-Making Within The Writing Process) on elementary school students' writing, visual literacy, and reading skills. RMC Research Corporation of Portsmouth, New…

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…

Research on educational administration from the past 40 years emphasizes the principal as an instructional leader. However, the research community has done little to specifically examine what literacy knowledge and practices elementary principals need to possess or do regarding literacy teaching and learning. Because federal legislation has…

The objective of this collaborative research is to evaluate the impact of a pedagogical intervention that combines flexible grouping and explicit instruction of reading comprehension strategies. The development of competencies is spread over a two years interval. However, despite this quite long implementation period, several Quebec students still…

This paper examines the use of student planners (agendas) with elementary school students. It asks how teachers, students and parents in two classrooms engage in the literacy practice of using student planners. A literacy object originally introduced to manage schoolwork in and out of school for students with learning difficulties, planners are…

With all of the reform models, research-based programs, leadership training, and professional development focused on reading and writing, we certainly know more about literacy today than we ever have before. So why are schools still suffering with low literacy levels? The answer lies in ineffective and unbalanced literacy instruction. Through the…

We present evidence suggesting that the effect of self-explanations on learning is not always beneficial and, in fact, in some contexts has a detrimental effect. Over eight sessions, fourth-graders engaged in investigation of a database with the goal of identifying causal effects. In a separate task, children in one condition also generated…

Concern over worldwide literacy rates prompted the United Nations to establish the UN Literacy Decade (2003-2012) with one area of focus being to provide support to schools to develop effective literacy programs (UNESCO, 2005). This study addressed the area of providing support to schools to develop effective literacy programs by exploring the…

There are a high number of students who struggle with reading comprehension beyond the primary grades and understanding the skills involved in successful reading comprehension continues to be a topic of investigation. The Simple View of Reading (SVR) is a viable theory of reading that suggests reading comprehension results from developing skills…

The aim of this follow-up study was to examine the progress made by 13 Greek-speaking precocious readers in phonological awareness, reading and spelling from the fourth to sixth grades of primary education, and to compare their progress with that of 11 nonprecocious reader classmates. It was hypothesised that because of the linguistic…

The study reported here examined the efficacy of a small group (Tier 2 in a three-tier Response to Intervention model) literacy intervention for older low-progress readers (in Years 3-6). This article focuses on the second phase of a two-phase, crossover randomized control trial involving 26 students. In Phase 1, the experimental group (E1)…