Literacy is the foundation of learning supporting development in all content areas, and teachers are crucial to the academic achievement of all students. Preparing teachers to adequately meet this need is essential. The problem addressed in this study was that classroom teachers in California might not feel effective in teaching literacy skills to…

This is the first in an occasional series on the dramatic national push to revamp how reading is being taught in the earliest grades. This EdSource special report examines the state of early reading in California, the needs of special learners, teacher preparation and training and curricula and textbooks that are driving instruction. This ongoing…

Despite recent calls to more fully incorporate multimodal perspectives into literacies research, there is still limited scholarship examining how students critically engage in reading activities by drawing on embodied practices. Racially and linguistically minoritized students are particularly disadvantaged by dominant logocentric and…

The Big Lift™ (Big Lift) is a preschool to third-grade initiative designed to boost literacy skills and ensure that children are reading proficiently by the third grade. First launched in 2012 by the County of San Mateo, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and the San Mateo County Office of Education, Big Lift comprises more than 300…

This study integrated reading and bilingual theories to examine the reading behaviors of second grade Latinx students in a Dual Language program. It explored how the students' differing language backgrounds (simultaneous bilinguals and sequential bilinguals who had developed Spanish as a home language) might influence their early reading…

Teachers who meet Common Core recommendations about teaching with multicultural literature need to recognize the traditions, values, and customs of various cultures so they can make sound decisions about the authenticity of the books they select for their students. Furthermore, teachers who support students' literacy achievements with exemplary…

Throughout our targeted approach of explicit collaborative translation during small-group reading instruction in a bilingual education classroom, fourth grade emergent bilinguals employed the strategy to comprehend narrative text in a range of ways, similar to middle school students in reading instruction research. As students acknowledged the…

Early adolescence is a critical time for examining academic motivation, specifically motivation to read. To support self-determined motivation to read, students' needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness must be met within the classroom context. Because classroom instructional practices are a key component of adolescents' daily experiences…

Mary Kennedy (1999) introduced the problem of enactment to describe how novice teachers often struggle to put what they have learned in coursework into practice in the field. One approach to this problem is to put practice at the center of teacher education by specifying core practices of teaching around which to structure novices' learning…

The purpose of this study was to determine if first-grade English Learners made patterns of language related errors when reading, and if so, to identify those patterns and how teachers coded language related errors when analyzing English Learners' running records. Using research from the fields of both literacy and Second Language Acquisition, we…

The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of a literacy intervention program on student achievement and behavior at two urban high schools. Two groups were identified and the sample was a convenience sample for this study. One group of students is not enrolled in the intervention program, while the other group of students is enrolled in…

Poor literacy achievement among English learners has contributed significantly to their high dropout rates, poor job prospects, and high poverty rates. The National Literacy Panel on Language Minority Children and Youth has suggested that English learners benefit from the same direct, systematic instruction in the five essential components of…

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) has updated its 2009 intervention report for SuccessMaker®, a set of computer-based courses designed to supplement regular K-8 reading instruction. The program is designed to improve skills in areas such as concepts of print, phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, grammar, and…

Last year, the author and his ninth-grade students explored ways to use mobile media devices such as iPods and cell phones to help guide literacy practices in their English classroom. Their school, South Central High School (SCHS; a pseudonym), is a public high school located in urban Los Angeles. As part of their seven-week exploration, the…

Our nation's educational system has scored many extraordinary successes in raising the level of reading and writing skills in younger children. Yet the pace of literacy improvement in our schools has not kept up with the accelerating demands of the global knowledge economy. In state after state, the testing data mandated by No Child Left Behind…