The goal of the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Practice Guide, "Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten through 3rd Grade," is to offer educators specific, evidence-based recommendations for teaching foundational reading skills to students in kindergarten through 3rd grade. The guide suggests…

This paper describes the structure and activities of READ (Reading Effectively Across the Disciplines), a pilot initiative to improve students' critical reading skills, disciplinary literacy and academic success. READ employs a multimodal design that consists of faculty training in disciplinary literacy instruction and curricular enhancement,…

A Comprehensive K-3 Reading Policy establishes intensive reading intervention for K-3 students to ensure they read on grade level by the end of third grade. The policy then requires third grade students to demonstrate sufficient reading skills for promotion to fourth grade. Retention provides struggling readers the additional time and intensive…

The presence of technology in K-12 classrooms continues to increase. With the onset of these technological advances, a refined lens for analysis of the effectiveness of these tools is required. Web based tools necessitate a synthesis of Technological, Pedagogical and Content knowledge. Moreover, the use of technology should support the content and…

This Kindergarten Teacher's Guide provides information for kindergarten teachers on how to support families as they practice foundational reading skills at home. It serves as a companion to the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade. Both guides present four…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress and the Common Core State Standards require students, starting in elementary school, to read an increasing amount of informational text (U.S. Department of Education, 2010). Students with learning disabilities, however, typically struggle with expository text and require even more direct instruction…

This article exposes the problem of using declarative rather than procedural knowledge to help K--12 students recognize irony in stories. It offers commonplace procedures drawn from students' everyday language experience together with more abstract irony clues to help students recognize irony in stories and increase their story comprehension.…

This article summarizes preservice teachers' experiences in a book club that read young adult literature focused on issues related to bullying. Preservice teachers learned to recognize various incidents of bullying in the books. They also began to consider how they might handle incidents of bullying in their future classrooms. (Contains 2 figures.)

An essential element in teaching children to effectively comprehend text is the use of teacher-led think-alouds. The overarching objective of this study was to explore how to better prepare early career teachers to conduct think-alouds in their classrooms. Data from 31 teachers consisted of (1) questionnaires, (2) lesson plans, (3) lesson…

This report offers seven practical evidence-based recommendations--that are relevant to all pupils, but particularly to those struggling with their literacy. To develop the recommendations we reviewed the best available international research and consulted experts to arrive at key principles for effective literacy teaching. This report is part of…

The April 2015 issue of "Reading in a Foreign Language" featured a discussion forum on extensive reading (ER). Most of the authors, recognized authorities on ER, discussed their views of the principles of ER, particularly in establishing and conducting ER programs. The purpose of this discussion is to review developments in the practice…

The Distance Clinical Connecting Candidates and Children (DC4) is an innovative new model for providing a clinical experience in a reading methods course. Pre-service teachers used this model to implement assessments and lessons via SKYPE with local elementary students. I designed this model to provide a clinical experience when faced with…

Close Reading is a strategy that can be used when reading challenging text. This strategy requires teachers to provide scaffolding, and create opportunities for think-alouds and rereading of text in order to help students become active readers who focus on finding text-based support for their answers. In addition, teachers must also be aware of…

The goal of the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Practice Guide, "Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten through 3rd Grade," is to offer educators specific, evidence-based recommendations for teaching foundational reading skills to students in kindergarten through 3rd grade. The guide suggests…

Reading U.S. Supreme Court opinions can be intimidating. Yet, in the digital age, it has never been easier to access them. The average opinion is about 4,750 words, and is one of approximately 75 issued by the Court each year. It might be reassuring to know that opinions contain similar parts and tend to follow a similar format. There are also…