Text reading fluency (TRF) is a common reading intervention target in second and third grade. TRF requires the integration of several skills that result in several pathways to dysfluent reading. However, when applying the drill-down approach to intervention targeting, practitioners are guided to consider students' rate and accuracy when reading…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between functional communication skills, underlying speech, language, and cognitive impairments and school-based speech pathology services in students with cerebral palsy (CP). Method: Thirty-five participants with CP who had Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) were classified…

To understand spoken language, listeners combine acoustic-phonetic input with expectations derived from context (Dahan & Magnuson, 2006). Eye-tracking studies on semantic context have demonstrated that the activation levels of competing lexical candidates depend on the relative strengths of the bottom-up input and top-down expectations (cf.…

Not all schools are obsessed with ensuring high test scores for students. Some schools have designed themselves around a priority of creating safe, empathetic learning environments. The Chrysalis Charter School in Palo Cedro, California, has a mission of developing a culture of kindness. The Minnesota New Country School in Henderson, Minnesota,…

Anthropogenic climate change (ACC) and evolution are examples of issues that are perceived differently by scientists and the general public. Within the scientific community, there are clear consensuses that human activities are increasing global temperatures (ACC) and that evolutionary mechanisms have led to the biodiversity of life on Earth…

Early comprehension is an important, but not well-understood, contribution to early literacy and language development. Specifically, research regarding the nature of skills representative of early comprehension, including how they contribute to later reading success, is needed to support best practices to adequately prepare students. This article…

Early comprehension is an important, but not well-understood, contribution to early literacy and language development. Specifically, research regarding the nature of skills representative of early comprehension, including how they contribute to later reading success, is needed to support best practices to adequately prepare students. This article…

The current study examined the relationship between oral reading fluency (ORF) and reading comprehension for students in second grade. A total of 84 participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions that involved reading a grade-appropriate passage with either 0%, 10%, 20%, or 30% scrambled words and answering subsequent comprehension…

Readers attempt to build coherent representations for what they read, but those representations may fail to capture the actual content of texts. For example, although narrative situations often change dramatically as plots unfold, readers do not necessarily revise what they know to accurately represent the current state of affairs in a text. This…

Reading instruction for middle- and high-school students is focused on vocabulary and comprehension, yet research suggests that comprehension skills among these students are alarmingly low. Small-group reading interventions are becoming more prevalent in schools, but there are few studies regarding small-group reading comprehension interventions.…

This study examines the relationship between systematic direct observation (SDO) of time on task (TOT) and student engagement as measured by a self-report task-specific measure. The research questions guiding the study are (a) what is the relationship between SDO of TOT and a self-report measure of student effort, and (b) what is the relationship…

In this article, the author discusses the advantages of using the interactive engagement instructional method. A model of interactive engagement (IE) instructional method involves questioning students by challenging them to think deeply about a problem or complex question. Essential to this process is frequent and thoughtful interaction with the…

The authors examined the effects of a simplified English dictionary accommodation on the reading-test performance of Hmong English-language learners (ELLs). Participants included a control group of 69 non-ELL students and an experimental group of 133 Hmong ELLs from 3 urban middle schools in Minnesota. In a randomized counterbalanced design, all…

This study outlines a formative assessment system using a consistent set of cut scores on Curriculum-Based Measurement-Reading (CBM-R) probes and investigates four statistical methods for establishing cut scores. Cut scores were established using the Minnesota statewide achievement test in reading at grade 3 as the criterion for a successful…

To refocus its professional development plan, Chaska Middle School East (Minnesota) looked at where student achievement was lagging. Using the Killion back-mapping model, a student-focused, data-driven, multi-step process by which teachers gather and study student data to determine where professional growth, development, or training is most…