Students in the 3rd and 4th grade often encounter what has been called a reading "slump" when their class curriculums increasingly ask them to comprehend and learn from texts. Students are more likely to struggle if they have not been offered sufficient opportunities to build world and domain knowledge and engage in challenging…

Background: Although Zimbabwe has performed quite well on Grade 6 SACMEQ literacy assessments compared to other African countries, reading levels are generally low and there is little research on reading literacy in Zimbabwean primary schools. Aim: Grade 3 and 4 learners' reading comprehension (RC), accuracy and speed in oral reading fluency (ORF)…

Reading interventions that focus on metacognitive strategy instruction for elementary students reveal positive effects but also require extensive teacher training and significant oversight by the research team. In the current study, a more 'hands off' scalable approach to strategy instruction was tested, where initial teacher training and…

Existing research reveals a robust relationship between self-reported print exposure and long-term literacy development, yet few studies have demonstrated how reading skills change as children read a book in the short term. In this study, 50 children (mean age 9.7 years, SD = 0.8) took turns with a prerecorded narrator reading aloud a popular…

Reading comprehension tests involve not only reading passages and answering questions but also making choices such as the test-taking strategy to use, whether to search passages for answers, and where to begin searching. We examined the associations between student characteristics, passage type, test-taking strategies, and students' time searching…

This action research study aimed to improve reading with understanding in a lower primary classroom in Fiji. Five emergent readers were selected through an examination of class running records. Peer observation, student worksheets, and class running records were utilized to collect data. The data analysis revealed that when teachers implement…

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,…

Because dual-language books (DLBs) print the entire text in two languages nearby on the page, they have great potential for supporting children's biliteracy development by providing contexts to compare/contrast languages. However, little is known about how children read DLBs independently and how they may/may not use such characteristics to…

The increasing number of students who lack proficient reading skills is well known in Germany, as well as globally. Students with learning disabilities (LD), problem behavior, and German as a second language (L2) may face even greater hurdles. However, it is essential for teachers to provide adequate support to maintain equal educational…

Students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) have difficulty with most reading skills, including reading comprehension. Improving reading comprehension skills requires efficient interventions that consider both meaning- and code-based skills simultaneously. Using a single-subject multiple-baseline design across participants, with alternating…

This study examined the comprehension skills and strategies presented in current reading textbooks used within the United States as a means of describing a contributor to the ecological component of reading. The ways in which comprehension skills and strategies are distributed across genres as well as connected to the National Reading Panel…

In this study, it was aimed to remediate the reading difficulties of a fifth-grade student having no physical or mental problem but experiencing reading difficulties and to develop his skills of reading fluency. For this purpose, the repeated reading, paired reading, and word repetition techniques were used in the research process. In addition,…

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 current study investigated the impact of manipulating reading strategy, reading the questions first (QF) or the passage first (PF), during a reading comprehension test, and we explored how reading strategy was related to student characteristics. Participants' eye movements were monitored as they read 12 passages and answered multiple-choice…

Highly effective elementary teachers faced challenges to professional development which differed from their urban or suburban peers. With the increasing need for student proficiency in reading, strategies to help grow their engagement and motivation were necessary to investigate and apply to instructional habits. The purpose of this basic…