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…

English Language Learners, such as my Hutterian students, struggle to overcome a variety of learning barriers. I examined a variety of instructional methods to determine what would help them. The first aspect I explored was how English Language Learners acquire literacy skills. I also investigated how to expand my students' background knowledge.…

Student-centered learning has an important place in education because it fosters student engagement and allows the traditional micromanaging teacher to transform into a guide. The current education model emphasizes teacher control and curriculum based on standardized testing, which stunts students' natural learning processes. This study…

Data from two different sites were used to examine how exposure to a highly academic curriculum is related to growth in beginning literacy and early reading skills from kindergarten through the end of third grade. In one site students in one school used the Direct Instruction (DI) program, "Reading Mastery (RM)", from kindergarten…