Odyssey Reading, published by CompassLearning, is a comprehensive reading/language arts program using adaptive software for core instruction. This is the first study of CompassLearning's Odyssey Reading (CLO) in PUSD and was based on data from the school years 2006-2008. For this study, Odyssey Reading was implemented in reading classes in grades…

The purpose of this study was to explore how three struggling, sixth grade readers experienced an after-school program designed to increase their affective and cognitive reading performance. Research in the areas of vocabulary acquisition, reading strategy development, discussion of text, time spent reading, engagement, and reader self-perception…

This study followed a cohort of students from Grade 1 to Grade 11 in one struggling school district that had Reading Recovery (RR) in the Grade 1. The RR program is an intervention given only to students in the Grade 1 who are reading below grade level on the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Assessment. The researched district had a high poverty, high…

Students in Ginger Berninger's research studies "showed significant improvement in their reading and writing" after using these lessons--now available to teachers for the first time ever in one convenient book! A state-of-the-art set of lesson plans that can be used for differentiated instruction of students with dysgraphia, dyslexia, and OWL LD,…

Although some literacy researchers consider grouping students for reading instruction to be a proven educational practice, the support for this belief is lacking from a research synthesis perspective. With this idea in mind, Slavin comments in the middle of his review on the effects of grouping: "there is not enough research on within-class…

Implementing a qualitative case study, the researcher explored how a sixth-grade English language learner participated in literature discussions of various groupings in a classroom setting, and how she perceived these interactions about reading and text in the process of learning to read. The participant was struggling with reading in a…

Teachers are required to provide appropriate science instruction to all students, including children with special needs. However, educators are often left on their own to figure out how to effectively differentiate lessons and activities. This timely, practical guidebook shows general and special educators how to retool science activities and…

This study investigated the benefits of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) for middle-school students attending remedial reading classes. As a supplement to a strong language-based reading curriculum, a CAI programme that works on strengthening phonics word identification skills was provided to students in the treatment group. These students were…

This study was conducted to ascertain if repeated reading or question generation was more effective at improving reading fluency and comprehension of fourth- through sixth-grade students with learning disabilities or reading problems. Adult tutors trained by the investigator conducted the interventions. Instructional components and training within…

In the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), Congress called for the U.S. Department of Education (ED) to conduct a rigorous study of the conditions and practices under which educational technology is effective in increasing student academic achievement. A 2007 report presenting study findings for the 2004-2005 school year, indicated that, after one…

This article presents a lesson cycle of activities for teaching reading and writing skills for expository text. The lesson cycle consists of four parts: (1) vocabulary words, (2) text structures, (3) modified sentence completion activity, and (4) rewriting text. Sixth- and seventh-grade summer school students were taught to recognize and…

This paper describes a comprehensive set of studies designed to assess the potential for commercial reading programs to teach reading in science. Specific questions focus on the proportion of selections in the programs that contain science and the amount of science that is in those selections, on the genres in which the science is portrayed, on…

Not too long ago, on a visit to two sixth-grade classrooms, the author saw very clearly the challenge teachers have before them when they try to differentiate reading. In both classrooms, 11-year-olds who read like fourth graders shared tables with classmates who read like the average ninth grader--a five-year span. How teachers approach this…

This article reports a synthesis of intervention studies conducted between 1994 and 2004 with older students (Grades 6-12) with reading difficulties. Interventions addressing decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension were included if they measured the effects on reading comprehension. Twenty-nine studies were located and synthesized.…

Sound symbolism is the notion that there is a subset of words in the world's languages for which sounds and their symbols have some degree of correspondence. Two studies assessed 5th and 6th graders' knowledge of word meanings for English sound symbolic and non-sound symbolic words. Both studies found that the meanings of sound symbolic words were…