Motivating today's adolescents to read is a challenge. This article discusses the kinds of literacy instructional practices that leverage what we know about adolescent motivation. It also reviews several evidence-based literacy interventions designed to engage and motivate adolescent readers that can potentially lead to improvements in student…

Motivating today's adolescents to read is a challenge. Martha Abele Mac Iver, Marcia H. Davis, and Douglas J. Mac Iver discuss the kinds of literacy instructional practices that address what we know about adolescent motivation. They also review several evidence-based literacy interventions designed to engage and motivate adolescent readers that…

Children's development as readers is a complex and multifaceted process. Rather than emphasizing individual components of reading instruction, Melanie R. Kuhn and Katherine A. Dougherty Stahl argue that it is more effective to view the reading process as a reciprocal or interactive one in which readers' development in one component of reading can…

Phonics and fluency instruction are primarily viewed as elementary-centric skills that do not have a place in middle school, which may neglect the usefulness this type of instruction provides to older students. Literacy centers are one method for successfully teaching these skills in a middle school setting. The purpose of this paper is to provide…

Text reading fluency is an important reading goal for all students. Students with a known reading disability often need systematic and evidence-based instructional supports to reach grade-level benchmarks in fluency. A recent focus on high-impact tutoring practices has given attention to the virtual or remote implementation of programs. This…

Stand-alone reading intervention courses, or reading classes, are designed to facilitate the literacy development of adolescents who have been deemed "struggling" readers. However, the existence of such courses does not mean that these goals are realized. Decades of qualitative research on youth perspectives and experiences have…

Several strategies that demonstrate promise are available for educators to improve reading comprehension outcomes for students. However, some students, including students with and at risk for learning disabilities, require more intensive supports to develop proficiency in reading comprehension. To support these students, teachers must intensify…

The simple view of reading is commonly presented to educators in professional development about the science of reading. The simple view is a useful tool for conveying the undeniable importance--in fact, the necessity--of both decoding and linguistic comprehension for reading. Research in the 35 years since the theory was proposed has revealed…

Helping English learners and economically disadvantaged students read as well as their more advantaged peers is a struggle for many schools. This study tested WordGen Elementary, a program to improve fourth- and fifth-grade students' ability to understand the academic language used in school and support their reading achievement. This Study…

While adolescent foundational skills interventions can be critical levers for reading improvement, district leaders, teachers, and researchers must make complex decisions about how to evaluate their effectiveness in context. In this discussion article, we explore three issues and tensions we experienced during a 2-year research-practice…

Developmental dyslexia, or specific reading disorder, is a reading impairment characterized by persistent difficulty in word recognition, decoding, and spelling skills in children despite having average or above academic performance in other areas. To increase an understanding of the nature of dyslexia and its relationship to music, this article…

Primary students who struggle to read need incentive to redirect their mindset back onto the productive path of daily reading. Reading is daunting to the youngest readers who experience difficulties because the act of reading is difficult and tiresome. Effective reading engagement programs motivate these readers to read on a daily basis and…

A substantial number of students read significantly below grade level, and students with disabilities perform far below their non-disabled peers. Reading achievement data indicate that many students with and at-risk for reading disabilities require more intensive reading interventions. This chapter utilizes the theoretical model of the Simple View…

Chicago Public Schools is working to improve early literacy outcomes through a multiyear professional development initiative for preK-2 teachers. This initiative--the P-2 Balanced Literacy Initiative--aims to improve literacy instruction by training teachers to balance systematic foundational skills instruction with reading and writing instruction…

This paper describes a four-month reading program that was implemented at a state prison and outlines how fictional stories, both read and told, can develop psychological insights such as mentalization and emotional literacy. How activities such as this can have therapeutic benefits without actually being therapy is discussed.