Purpose: Children with cochlear implants (CIs) have difficulty with literacy, and although it is established that phonological processing underlies literacy skills in children with typical hearing (TH), the relation of phonological processing and literacy in children with CIs is not fully understood. This study evaluated the contributions of…

The COVID-19 pandemic caused unprecedented disruption in education across the United States. Prior to the pandemic, students in third grade struggled with low reading proficiency, a difficulty that predicts persistent academic struggles, school dropout, and even delinquency. Districts in South Carolina and around the United States adapted to the…

The purpose of this correlational study was to investigate the relationship between the quality of the Early Childhood Education (ECE) programs for students who attended a Prekindergarten (PK) program, and for students who did not attend a Pre-kindergarten program from a rural school district located in South Carolina. The population of students…

The problem addressed in this study was kindergarteners in public, rural schools struggle with phonemic awareness, causing their reading development to be delayed. The purpose of this qualitative narrative inquiry study was to explore through the stories of kindergarten teachers whether students from a public, rural setting struggled with a lack…

The purpose of this quantitative quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest, control group design study was to investigate the effects of Response to Intervention (RtI) and computer-based programs on addressing literacy acquisition skills. This study is important because there is an inordinate number of students who are designated as requiring special…

This action research describes the influence of the research-based program, "Reading Workshop," based on student reading achievement, specifically, in one third-grade South Carolina summer reading camp classroom. Guiding the research, the problem of practice arose from the passing of South Carolina's Act 284, which states that school…

The purpose of this action research study was to determine how instructional coaching impacted implementation of shared reading strategies in kindergarten classrooms. This study included four teachers from one primary school in South Carolina. All of the teachers that participated in this study had more than two years of teaching experience. Data…

This study of children from two U. S. states examined associations among four cognitive and academic skills: executive function (EF), visuo-motor integration, mathematics assessed with applied problems, and letter-word knowledge. Before (T1) and after (T2) kindergarten, children (N=555) were assessed using the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders (HTKS) EF…

The Waterford Early Reading Program is a computer-assisted instruction program that ensures individualized learning for kindergarten through second grade students. The Waterford curriculum was assigned to kindergarten, first grade, and second grade students in a school district in South Carolina for the 2015-2016 school year. The Developmental…

Third grade is a critical checkpoint in a child's educational journey. By the end of third grade, children need literacy skills that prepare them for increasing curriculum demands in fourth grade and beyond. Students who are not reading on grade level by this point are significantly more likely to drop out of high school or fail to graduate on…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine what, if any, impact that attending a four year old kindergarten program had on five year old kindergarteners reading ability as measured by Dominie testing, compared to those five year olds who did not attend a four year old program at Inman Elementary School. The significance of this study…

Teachers at a Title I elementary school in South Carolina implemented the scripted Reading Mastery© program (RMP) to improve students' comprehension. Comprehension scores did not increase, despite teachers receiving RMP professional development (PD) prior to implementing the program. Administrators were unaware if the teachers were adequately…