The study's purpose was to explore if there was a statistically significant difference in reading comprehension of non-Limited English Proficient students when reading eBooks compared to printed books. Second, it explored if there was a statistically significant difference in Limited English Proficient students. Third, it explored if there was a…

Middle school is one of the most important times during which students gain knowledge. However, a large proportion of adolescents have continued to complete middle school without mastering essential knowledge of, and skills in, vocabulary and reading comprehension. Adolescents who miss school in the 30-60 days leading up to high-stakes exams…

Promoting Adolescents' Comprehension of Text (PACT) is a text- and discourse-based set of instructional practices that engage students with disciplinary texts as a means of building content knowledge and improving reading comprehension. PACT)s "efficacy" has been the subject of extensive previous trials. The purpose of this study was to…

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…

This is a qualitative case study framed by a sociosemiotic theoretical framework to explore science and language instruction with three Emergent Bilinguals (EBs) in sixth grade. The study details the modeling and explanatory processes used by EBs to mediate science learning through evidence-based argumentation. A thematic analysis of students'…

Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education programs focus on growing the STEM workforce. The problem is many middle and high school students in Texas require support from the STEM teacher to comprehend complex science texts. Research shows interest in science begins to decline in adolescence leading to a shortage of employees to…

The purpose of the current study was to determine whether the READ 180 intervention program used in the District's middle schools yielded improvements in reading on the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) Reading scores, the Renaissance Star Reading assessment, and the Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI) assessment. The READ 180…

This study investigated the relationship between listening comprehension and reading comprehension to determine if environmental factors might be contributing to a possible change in the equalization age for these two comprehension modalities from what was theorized by Thomas Sticht. The study employed a counterbalanced design to measure the…

Background: Reading instruction begins at the primary level with reading comprehension issues manifesting themselves by the 3rd-grade and becoming more pronounced by fourth-grade. While primary teachers often teach narrative comprehension skills, middle school teachers have the responsibility to teach both narrative and expository comprehension…

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…

Reading comprehension is an essential academic skill (Nash & Snowling, 2006;National Reading Panel, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000).Yet, among students in the eighth grade, approximately 64% of all students and 91% of students with disabilities do not read at proficient levels (National Center for Education…

This study utilized secondary analyses of a randomized controlled trial and investigated the extent to which prestest word identification efficiency, reading fluency, and vocabulary knowledge moderated the effects of an intervention on reading comprehension outcomes for struggling readers in sixth through eighth grades. Given that the experimental…

Inference skill is one of the most important predictors of reading comprehension. Still, there is little rigorous research investigating the effects of inference instruction on reading comprehension. There is no research investigating the effects of inference instruction on reading comprehension for English learners with reading comprehension…

No studies have investigated the cognitive attributes of middle school students who are adequate and inadequate responders to Tier 2 reading intervention. We compared students in Grades 6 and 7 representing groups of adequate responders (n = 77) and inadequate responders who fell below criteria in (a) comprehension (n = 54); (b) fluency (n = 45);…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of a writing intervention on the writing and reading achievement of middle school students. Specifically, this study was concerned with 6th grade students who were exposed to a writing intervention and those 6th grade students who were not exposed to a writing intervention with regards to…