An inferential comprehension intervention addressing reading comprehension difficulties of middle schoolers was tested. Method Students in Grades 6 to 8 (n = 145; 53.8% female; 71% White; 24% Black) who failed their state literacy test, were randomly assigned to tutor-led, computerized, or business-as-usual [BaU] interventions. Results The…

Reading Apprenticeship is a model of academic literacy instruction designed by the Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI) at WestEd to improve student literacy skills and academic achievement. Based on understandings of the close relationship between curricular reform and professional development, Reading Apprenticeship includes an instructional…

English language learners struggle to read and comprehend the work of William Shakespeare in secondary schools across the country. Yet, these students from diverse backgrounds continue to be required to read this literature. This article offers a review of arguments made to remove Shakespeare from the curriculum as well as reasons for the…

To address the needs of middle school students who experience difficulty with reading, students are often placed in reading intervention programs to improve literacy skills. This study explores the question: in what ways do students successfully and unsuccessfully use self-initiated comprehension strategies in their efforts to engage with…

In Multi-tiered System of Support (MTSS) and Response to Intervention (RTI) models, the reading achievement of English Learners (ELs) is assessed multiple times during the school year to monitor students' progress toward meeting grade-level reading standards. Most MTSS/RTI frameworks do not include a comparable system for assessing oral language…

The purpose of this case study was to investigate how an English language arts teacher used young adult literature to help English language learners improve English and literacy comprehension. Through the lens of Anzaldua's (2007) "borderlands", and Rolon-Dow's (2005) "critical care", the authors analyze the case study…

As educators, we know students from all sections of the population who are bright, but do not do well academically (Grade Power Learning, 2018). This is particularly true with students from underrepresented populations or whose parents are not college graduates. Significant reasons for this are because they do not know how to study effectively,…

This study investigated the impact of a graduate course that focused on picture books on teachers' understandings of the picture book format and the ways in which these understandings influenced their self-reports of picture book use in the classroom. Findings of this qualitative investigation revealed that immersion in and analysis of the picture…

Reading comprehension--the ability to understand the meaning of text--is a foundational ability that enables children to learn in school and throughout life. Children who struggle with reading comprehension in the third or fourth grade are at high risk for dropping out of school, with detrimental effects on their future employment, income, and…

Main idea and summary are essential elements of reading comprehension. We report results from Grades 4 and 5 student performance on two years of state-mandated standardized reading testing which indicate that students perform statistically significantly lower on main idea and summary questions on the tests than any other question category. In this…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive case study was to explore the teacher/student reading conferences in two first grade teachers' classrooms in one primary school. Sixteen one-to-one reading conferences were recorded and transcribed over a two-month period and coded for content as related to the CAFÉ (Boushey & Moser, 2009) model of…

Decision-making is essential for the work of teaching. Preservice teachers must learn to leverage knowledge about young readers' strengths, needs, and interests in order to plan and teach guided reading lessons skillfully. However, limited research examines preservice teachers' decision-making based on what they know about individual children. In…

We identify and document 3 cognitive obstacles, 3 cognitive affordances, and 1 type of integer understanding that can function as either an obstacle or affordance for learners while they extend their numeric domains from whole numbers to include negative integers. In particular, we highlight 2 key subsets of integer reasoning: understanding or…

In this quasi-experimental study, we assessed the promise of Word Generation, a research-based academic vocabulary program, on improving the reading achievement outcomes of struggling sixth-grade readers in an after-school small group instructional setting. After 34 hours of academic vocabulary instruction, we compared the performance of a…

This quasi-experimental mixed methods study examined the use of e-readers during guided reading instruction and its impact on 5th grade students' reading motivation, attitude toward reading, and reading comprehension. For 10 weeks, 19 students received guided reading instruction by means of the traditional paper/text format, while 16 students…