Prosody is an important indicator of reading development, but many teachers are unclear about how it can help students improve their reading fluency. Beyond demonstrating expressive or flowing reading, specific components of "reading prosody" can distinctly reveal how well word recognition and comprehension processes coalesce, providing…

In this manuscript we show how readalouds can significantly enrich student vocabulary and comprehension by demonstrating enhancements that will foster student learning and language development. We anchor our examples to empirical evidence demonstrating that the content of a readaloud (i.e., the what we teach) as well as the quality of the…

When young children of Color from minoritized communities read decodable readers mandated by their school districts, children approach reading the texts with the expectation that the texts will make sense. While decodable readers allow children to apply their knowledge of phonics skills in context to support their word recognition, they tend to…

Although much is known about supporting preschoolers' alphabet knowledge, less is known about instructional moves that support preschoolers' narrative comprehension or how preschoolers' developing cognitive skills may support their narrative comprehension development. This school-university partnership project examined relations of preschoolers'…

The authors describe Literary Analysis and Writing, an integrated instructional routine, developed through a formative experiment research project, that prompts students to uncover the deeper meanings of literary texts. The routine weaves together brief preteaching of carefully selected vocabulary words, whole-class assisted reading of text, close…

Expanding definitions of literacy requires classroom instruction that provides multiple pathways for students to demonstrate their understanding of the content and communicate knowledge. Privileging the use of visual and multimodal texts as valued school communication may create equitable practices for students who are new to English or struggle…

This study examined multilingual learners' achievement and growth in their language and literacy skills. Fifty-two multilingual students in Grades 2 and 4 with varying levels of English proficiency from Spanish-speaking homes in the American South participated in this study. They were assessed on English reading comprehension (RC), English word…

In this qualitative case study, the authors explored the responses of seven Mexican American mothers during a bilingual (Spanish-English) parent book club with a chapter book from their children's elementary school literacy curriculum. The authors sought to better understand the findings of a previous study in which parents expressed new learning…

In this qualitative study, the authors explored the multimodal responses provided by gifted fifth graders. Students read the novel "Ungifted" by Gordon Korman and responded through writing, drawing, and talking. They preferred plot summaries for their written response and created a new form, visual summary, in which image was dominant.…

Spanish-English cognates (words from ancestrally related languages similar in appearance and meaning) are plentiful in students' reading materials, but few researchers have documented elementary-age bilingual (Spanish-English) students' actual use of cognates. The authors drew from two qualitative research studies to show how bilingual students…

Practitioners face many challenges when working with students who are experiencing difficulty with comprehension. The act of creating meaning with texts is complex, and comprehension is often measured in schools as a product of reading. Product assessments, such as answering questions or retelling a text, take place after reading, which makes it…

According to interpretations of results from the latest oral reading fluency (ORF) study conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (White et al., 2020), fourth-grade students who score below the basic standard require interventions that focus on word recognition, phonological decoding, and fluency. Before such mandates for…

The authors describe a 3-year project to design and test a multilingual literacy curriculum that centers language and student voice in the service of literacy development for multilingual learners. In the first 2 years, researchers, teachers, and students worked together to develop the curriculum using design-based, case study methods. In the…

Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) display social communication differences that may affect reading comprehension. The enjoyment of storybooks is a natural part of childhood. Students with ASD experience difficulty with understanding the thoughts and feelings of others, which may impede their comprehension of character motive in…

This article was inspired by the fact that teachers have been asked to increase the difficulty of texts that students encounter without clear guidance on how to support their students when reading difficult texts. First, findings are presented from a recent review that investigated the effects of increased text difficulty on elementary students'…