In recent years, the advent of low-cost digital and mobile devices has led to a strong expansion of social interventions, including those that try to improve student learning and literacy outcomes. Many of these are focused on improving reading in low-income countries, and particularly among the most disadvantaged. Some of these early efforts have…

Designed to help preservice and inservice teachers use assessments to identify problems and employ appropriate strategies to help their students become better readers, this text includes 12 case studies that detail children's literacy struggles. The cases are embedded within a framework of research-based instructional interventions related to best…

The issue of boys' literacy has been explicitly named as "dangerous territory"--difficult to negotiate in terms of the validity of "failure" rhetoric, the stereotyping of boys' abilities and interests and the intersection of gender with factors such as class and geographical location. In this article, we address the issue of…

This document represents a summary of the report, "Five States' Efforts to Improve Adolescent Literacy." "Five States' Efforts to Improve Adolescent Literacy" describes efforts by five states (Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, New Jersey, and Rhode Island) to improve adolescent literacy. Highlighting common challenges and lessons,…

At school, Salem, (pseudonym) was below his reading level but above his writing level according to his teacher. At home, his father perceived Salem as a proficient reader capable of working independently. From the author's point-of-view, Salem needed to revalue himself as a reader through understanding that his miscues are an attempt to construct…

This document presents case studies and information related to the United States patent on a method of and structure for improving the reading efficiency of persons with specific dyslexia in which the reading matter is presented with a brightness substantially greater than the background of the reading material. The paper begins with a description…

Describes how an adult male learner who had been identified as learning disabled many years ago participated in a spelling-based word-study program. Describes the program and its theoretical rationale, discusses his progress, and notes implications for adult-literacy learners' spelling instruction. (SR)

The Plaut, McClelland, Seidenberg and Patterson (1996) connectionist model of reading was evaluated at two points early in its training against reading data collected from British children on two occasions during their first year of literacy instruction. First, the network's non-word reading was poor relative to word reading when compared with the…

"Lennie," labelled early in life with an IQ number below 70, at age 25 and awaiting trial for murder took on the challenge of learning to read a complex, sophisticated language. He joined a class filled with people who were curious about the way words worked and who used the handbook "Crashing the Language Barrier: The English…

Describes a successful adaptation of Marie Clay's intensive one-on-one reading intervention approach for a disabled reader at the middle school level. Discusses components of the instructional plan. Presents guidelines for literacy instruction for remedial readers. (SR)

This report describes the efforts of the California State Department of Education in response to a 1975-76 evaluation report which indicated that in some schools, third grade reading scores were declining--specifically in schools whose entering students averaged below the twentieth percentile on the 1973-74 Entry Level Test (ELT) after three years…

Describes how profiles of individual readers are valuable constructs in assessing independent word learning strategies and how such information can drive instruction. Describes the independent word learning strategies of three learners of varying ability, illustrating what information think-alouds can provide teachers. Discusses instructional…

Academic Literacy was a year-long course focused on reading strategy development for all ninth graders at Thurgood Marshall Academic High School in the San Francisco Unified School District. Course goals were to help students become engaged, fluent, and competent readers of the variety of texts necessary for them to master to be successful in high…

Describing the SouthEastern Regional Vision for Education (SERVE) program and its mission to promote and support the continual improvement of educational opportunities for all learners in the Southeast, this paper focuses on the importance of improving student literacy outcomes in schools due to the demands of living in a technological,…

Sums up new integrated approaches to teaching reading that are needed to help troubled college readers cope with advanced academic material. Presents two case studies that show how these approaches can work with very different at-risk students. (RS)