Because of current federal and state educational policies, oral language development is an often overlooked aspect of language and literacy use and development of English Learning (EL) students in K-12 schools in the United States. This article describes a study in which a researcher used an ecobehavioral approach to investigate the conditional…

In October 2009, The New York State Education Department (NYSED), in partnership with the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE), was granted funding as part of the "Striving Readers Project" to address the literacy needs of adolescent struggling readers early in middle school. The goal of the project was to implement and examine…

In September of 2008 Scholastic Book Company donated content specific classroom libraries to one core team of sixth grade classrooms at Wentzville Middle School in the Wentzville School District. This was the first time that Scholastic had been involved in the concept of "team" libraries. The classrooms involved consisted of mathematics,…

This teacher-friendly guide is packed with motivating lessons designed to improve the content learning and literacy skills of English language learners (ELLs) in K-8. Offering research-supported strategies that teachers can implement immediately, the book explains how to use content-area texts to support ELLs' growth in five crucial areas:…

This grounded theory study examined the perceived effects of a cohort of seven secondary-level teachers earning a reading endorsement in a single-district sponsored professional development program. The researcher collected data through semi-structured personal interviews with the teachers, their principal, and the director of special services for…

This report presents the results from an evaluation of the fourth year of the Memphis Striving Readers Project (MSRP) conducted by Research for Better Schools (RBS). MSRP, funded for five years by the United States Department of Education, comprises two interventions aimed at improving adolescent literacy and the quality of literacy instruction…

In 2005, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Elementary and Secondary Education issued a request for proposals (RFP) for programs to improve adolescent literacy. The Department's stated goal was to improve the performance of struggling adolescent readers and help build a strong scientific research base around specific strategies to help…

Populations of minority students the United States have increased steadily over the past few decades to 42 percent of public school enrollment (Echevarria, 2011). English language learners (ELLs) are the fastest growing population of students enrolled in public schools across the United States. Nationally, if an ELL speaks English with difficulty,…

This brief describes a quasi-experimental study of Word Generation, conducted in public middle schools in Boston. Word Generation is a robust vocabulary intervention that is implemented across key subject areas. The purpose of the program is to enhance students' vocabulary in support of improved reading comprehension. The brief outlines the…

This study examines strategies for supporting vocabulary and content learning in 5 grade 9 Earth Science classes that are part of a SDAIE program (Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English) in an urban California high school. Students received vocabulary and content instruction during a unit on Earthquakes. One group of students performed…

This article discusses a strand of research conducted by the Education Development Center, Inc. in collaboration with the National Center for Supported Electronic Text. The research investigated the use of an online vocabulary support tool, Visual Thesaurus, for middle school students with and without disabilities. Data were collected from 10…

In this article, the author describes her multimodal teaching practices in her "Adolescent Literacy Methods" course at a graduate university in the United States. By doing so, she highlights content teacher's understanding and use of various multimodal texts to effectively teach adolescents inside the classroom. In lieu of this, she raises…

Research has shown that certain ways of teaching can make a difference in whether students learn standards-based content. Many strategies have proven to be effective in teaching literacy, mathematics, science and social studies. These strategies have facilitated blending academic and career/technical subjects to make learning more meaningful for…

While incorporating digital technologies into the classroom has offered new ways of teaching and learning into educational processes, it is essential to take a look at how the digital shift impacts teachers, school administration, and curriculum development. "Academic Knowledge Construction and Multimodal Curriculum Development" presents…

This report summarizes the results of the Newark, New Jersey, Striving Readers program for project Years 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. This report updates one analysis (3 years); the remainder of the impacts and implementation findings are for Year 4. The Striving Readers Grant addresses the unmet needs of middle school students reading 2 or more years below…