This article focuses on two programs that were created to enhance parent involvement practices in literacy. The goal of both programs was to create for parents enjoyable and rich experiences around literacy in the home, while demonstrating for parents how teachers approach reading instruction in the classroom. Programs to increase and support…

Content area literacy and disciplinary literacy are umbrella terms that describe two approaches to literacy instruction embedded within different subject areas or disciplines. Under a content area literacy approach, students learn reading and writing processes that are common across disciplines. As part of content area literacy instruction,…

More than half of North Carolina's grade 3 students struggle with reading. The percentage of students scoring below proficient in reading at the end of grade 3 was 55 percent in 2017/18. That percentage has remained largely unchanged, at above 50 percent, since 2013/14, when North Carolina passed its K-3 Read to Achieve literacy act. Read to…

Learning to read begins at home through everyday parent-child interactions, long before children attend school. Parents' continuing support of literacy development throughout elementary school positively affects their children's reading ability. Many recent efforts to motivate parents to be involved in their child's literacy development involve…

This article explores the ways in which transmediation (Suhor, 1984), the translation of meaning from one sign system into another, can support students in developing their confidence and capabilities as readers. The author, a 10th grade English teacher, details a literature workshop (Blau, 2003) unit in which students worked collaboratively to…

Discussions with sixth-form students about reading led Carolyn Massey and Paul Wiggin to start a sixth-form reading group. They describe here the series of themed sessions that they planned, and the student discussion and reflections that resulted. Listening to their students discuss their reading led Massey and Wiggin to reflect on what is meant…

As the ongoing national indicator of what American students know and can do, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Reading regularly collects achievement information on representative samples of students in grades 4, 8, and 12. Through "The Nation's Report Card," the NAEP Reading Assessment reports how well students…

The purpose of this article is to highlight the importance of providing reading interventions that are differentiated and aligned with an individual student's most foundational reading skill need. The authors present profiles of different readers and suggest three principal areas for support: decoding words, reading at an appropriate rate, and…

An essential element in teaching children to effectively comprehend text is the use of teacher-led think alouds. This article presents a three-step model to improve the quality and quantity of think alouds in K-6 classrooms. The article follows elementary teachers who planned, implemented, transcribed, and reflected upon think aloud lessons to…

Students may lack the motivation to read for many reasons, including inadequate access to interesting texts, limited encouragement to read for pleasure from adults, instructional practices that do not foster engagement in learning, or a history of reading failure. This article focuses on students with reading disabilities who may have a…

Embedding discipline-specific literacy instruction within social studies content can assist a variety of students, including those with reading difficulties, to build higher-level reading abilities, increase knowledge acquisition, and improve their overall content learning. Moreover, many state learning standards already address the need for…

Since pairing the classics with young adult literature can increase reading comprehension and spark interest amongst our students, this essay explores a unit plan for connecting Will Hobbs's "Downriver" (1991) with William Golding's "Lord of the Flies" (1954). Both works espouse significant and timely themes: the importance of…

There are numerous scholarly articles that focus on Chinese Students' decisions to go overseas and challenges they face in American High Schools. These research generates a holistic view on the subject., with many of them agreeing each other. Yet, despite many scholarly articles discussing this topic, I find few of these studies originate from…

English language learners struggle to read and comprehend the work of William Shakespeare in secondary schools across the country. Yet, these students from diverse backgrounds continue to be required to read this literature. This article offers a review of arguments made to remove Shakespeare from the curriculum as well as reasons for the…

Making inferences during reading is a critical standards-based skill and is important for reading comprehension. This article supports the improvement of reading comprehension for students with learning disabilities (LD) in upper elementary grades by reviewing what is currently known about inference instruction for students with LD and providing…