The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) updates its Comprehensive Strategic Plan for Elementary and Secondary Education each year, as required by Public Act 93-1036 (the Education Reform and Accountability Act of 2004). This annual "Strategic Plan Progress Report" details actions the agency is taking to fulfill the Board's mission,…

The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) develops and maintains a continuing five-year comprehensive strategic plan for elementary and secondary education in accordance with Public Act 93-1036. Agency staff members revisit the plan each year to review the agency's accomplishments and to refine the agency's strategies. The State Board amended…

This article presents an engaging means for turning disfluent readers into prosody superstars. Each week students align with Poetry Power Man and his superhero friends to battle the evil Robot Reader and his sidekicks. The Fluency Foursome helps students adhere to the multidimensional aspects of fluency where expression and comprehension are…

Each year, the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) updates its continuing, five-year comprehensive strategic plan for elementary and secondary education, per the Education Reform and Accountability Act of 2004. ISBE's Comprehensive Strategic Plan for Elementary and Secondary Education provides a comprehensive review of how the agency…

Public Act 93-1036 requires the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) to develop and maintain a continuing, five-year strategic plan for elementary and secondary education. The 2016 Comprehensive Strategic Plan is the agency's 12th such report. The first plan focused on ISBE's three primary goal areas: (1) enhancing literacy; (2) improving…

Describes the development of reciprocal teaching--an instructional procedure originally designed to improve poor readers' text comprehension--and its application in Springfield, Illinois, schools. Research is clustered into three types of studies: effectiveness, efficiency, and feasibility. Program implementation, evaluation, and success factors…

A new breed of standardized reading tests, slated for use in Michigan and Illinois, measures integrative thinking instead of isolated skills and gives teachers a valuable diagnostic tool. A breakdown of content areas is given, as well as a preview of actual questions. (IAH)

Teachers at Woodlawn Middle School in Long Grove, Illinois are no different than most. They were discouraged by the amount of testing taking place in their classrooms, frustrated with not having the kind of data they needed, and feeling overwhelmed by the data they did have. The teachers wanted to make better schoolwide instructional decisions,…

This report describes a program for improving reading comprehension in seventh graders by focusing on higher order thinking and metacognitive skills. The targeted population was in a growing, middle class community located in northern Illinois. The problem of below grade level reading comprehension was documented by Illinois Goals Assessment…

This paper describes the assessment and instructional strategies used in a migrant education programme that had positive academic outcomes for a group of 11 eight-to-12-year-old Spanish/English-speaking students of Mexican descent. Students attended this four-week summer programme, jointly sponsored by the University of Illinois and the local…

Recent workplace literacy initiatives for limited-English-proficient (LEP) employees in Illinois have resulted in employer interest in the measurement of adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) achievement, particularly in the area of reading comprehension. Employers are requesting that evidence of a language minority employee's reading ability…

A first-grade teacher investigated the use of daily poetry readings to help students develop certain characteristics of skilled readers, including fluency and comprehension. Students in a class receiving poetry-reading instruction had higher comprehension scores and reading levels than students in a control class receiving basal-reader…

A program was developed for improving primary level student intelligences in order to improve reading comprehension, prediction skills, and the ability to apply targeted reading strategies. The targeted population consisted of first and second grade students in a middle class community located in the far southern Chicago metropolitan area. The…

This report describes an intervention to aid students in demonstrating their comprehension of reading material through an alternative instrument. The target population consisted of fifth grade students in a middle class community in central Illinois. Problems in comprehension were revealed through declining district test scores and teacher…

A program was designed and implemented to improve student vocabulary and comprehension. The target population consisted of 59 students in grades 1, 2, and 3 in a low-income area of a large city in central Illinois. The problems of lack of prior knowledge, poor vocabulary, and insufficient comprehension were documented through data collected from…