Educators and researchers have been fighting the reading wars for the last century, with battles see-sawing literacy instruction in American schools from phonics to whole language and, most recently, back to phonics again. Over the last decade, 32 states and the District of Columbia have adopted new "science of reading" laws that require…

More than 5 million English learners attend U.S. public schools--and yet fewer than 3% of teachers are certified to work with them. Fill that gap in teacher education with this practical and comprehensive textbook, an evidence-based guide to providing English learners in Pre-K-Grade 6 with explicit, systematic instruction on language and literacy…

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 comparative case study explains the perspectives, experiences, and instructional contexts of teachers working with English Learners (EL) in Grades 3-5 to plan, deliver, and assess Second Language Morphological Awareness (L2MA) across three different program models. ELs have experienced low levels of reading comprehension since the inception…

Over the years, teachers have looked for the best way to teach their students to read. There are those who believe that teaching sight words is the best way to teach while others believe that a foundation in phonics instruction is a must. The purpose of this study is to determine the effect that phonics instruction has on the oral reading fluency…

The purpose of this study was to conduct a content analysis of the types and occurrences of explicit instructional moves recommended for teaching five essentials of effective reading instruction in grades 1, 3, and 5 core reading program teachers' editions in five widely marketed core reading programs. Guided practice was the most frequently…

Classroom teachers are provided instructional recommendations for teaching reading from their adopted core reading programs (CRPs). Explicit instruction elements or what is also called instructional moves, including direct explanation, modeling, guided practice, independent practice, discussion, feedback, and monitoring, were examined within CRP…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) initiative is a state-led effort that establishes a set of clear educational standards for English language arts and mathematics that states can voluntarily adopt. The standards have been informed by the best available evidence and the highest standards across the country and the world. They have been…

We report the results of a test-retest and alternate form reliability study of grade 1, 3, 5, and 8 reading measures from the easyCBM assessment system. Approximately 50 students in each grade participated in the study. In Grade 1, we studied the following measures: Phoneme Segmenting, Letter Sounds, Letter Names, Word Reading Fluency, and Passage…