The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) initiative is a state-led effort that establishes a set of clear educational standards for English language arts and mathematics that states can voluntarily adopt. The standards have been informed by the best available evidence and the highest standards across the country and the world. They have been…

This publication helps educators create differentiated reading instruction experiences for their students by showing the relationship between two distinct resources: Student Center Activities (SCAs) and the Common Core State Standards (CCSSs). Reading specialists, reading coaches, and teachers will find this document useful in lesson planning, as…

Progress monitoring refers to a system of ongoing data collection on academic skills of interest. Short samples of student performance are collected on a regular basis, and the scores from these short samples of performance are graphed to create a picture of student progress. Teachers can use the graphed student performance as they make…

Jacob, Bart, and Carl are children with intellectual disabilities (ID; i.e., mental retardation) who experience significant difficulty in learning to read. In the past, most research about reading methods for students with ID focused on teaching students to memorize sight words, a method that is clearly effective. Memorization of sight words is…

Reading First is a federal initiative authorized by the No Child Left Behind Act. The U.S. Department of Education provides Reading First grants to states, which, in turn, award subgrants to eligible school districts that submit approved proposals for how they will apply scientifically based reading research to improve reading instruction and…