Due to House Bill (HB) 3, passed by the 86th Legislature, Texas public independent school districts are mandated to assess early childhood students using a universal screener. This bill focuses on forming high-quality educational programs and improving reading success in pre-kindergarten through third grade. The Texas Education Agency (TEA) State…

Early literacy proficiency is a crucial predictor of later reading success, but research in this area often overlooks the unique challenges faced by English Learners (EL). This study addressed a significant gap in the literature by investigating the relationships between Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) scores, English…

A reader's ability to go beyond their surface-level understanding of words and to build a deeper representation of the text in their mind (i.e., reading comprehension) is predicated on a range of reader- and text-level variables that indicate how well a certain reader can read a certain text. The following study evaluates the extent to which the…

Children with Down syndrome exhibit unique learning characteristics that impact their educational progress. Despite this, research on effective reading interventions specifically tailored for this population remains limited. The present study aimed to find the best ways to teach teaching foundational reading skills to children with Down syndrome.…

This study analyzes the relationship between phonemic proficiency and orthographic learning in first and second-grade students. It is established in the empirical literature that phonemic skills play a crucial role in word-level reading. What is not thoroughly understood is why some children learn and remember words more efficiently than others.…

The student-teacher relationship plays an important role in the development of academic and social skills in early elementary (Torres, Domitrovich, & Bierman, 2015; Vitaro, Boivin, Brendgen, Girard, & Dionne, 2012; etc.). Although the importance of the student-teacher relationship is well-established, the importance for special education…

Foundational reading skills are key to the mastery of early literacy skills. While the process of reading is characterized by a combination of both word decoding skills and language comprehension, there are many reading skills that contribute to students being able to proficiently read text. In addition to mastery of skills, good school attendance…

Little is known about what contributes to individual differences in reading fluency after accounting for accuracy. Previous research has shown individual differences in the relative growth in word and nonword reading, specifically a pattern in which students who start lower on reading grow more in word than nonword reading ability. The purpose of…

Reading proficiency is one of the expected core outcomes of a successful elementary school experience for students, yet many school systems do not provide teachers with the requisite training, support, or resources to meet this fundamental objective. Providing teachers with professional learning paired with educative curriculum materials within a…

In 2016, a Midwestern state legislature passed the Read by Grade Three law that mandates students who are not proficient readers at the end of third grade to repeat the third grade. The problem is that teachers struggle with implementing effective instructional interventions, and they acknowledge their lack of experience with effective…

Reading and writing go hand in hand, students who struggle in reading are likely to struggle in writing. Yet, when we research interventions for students with reading difficulties and writing difficulties, we rarely combine the two. In a study by Puranik et al. (2017, 2018) investigating the feasibility and promise of a whole-class peer-assisted…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine whether there is a correlation between English language proficiency level (ELP) and growth in reading for English learners (ELs) in first, second, and third grade in suburban Virginia. In order to develop language skills, it is important to take the four language domains into consideration,…

Reading performance in third grade has significantly declined across the United States in recent years, suggesting a critical problem that was addressed in this study. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore the perspectives of K-3 teachers working in a rural elementary school district regarding a decline since 2018 in the…

The goal of this work was to examine the effects of computerized instruction in elementary school children in the context of COVID-19 school closure and pre-COVID-19 times. Specifically, this project investigated how the program i-Ready may facilitate reading skills during COVID-19 school closure and pre-COVID in-person learning. Moreover, this…

The purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between participating in an online software application focused on phonological processing and working memory and outcomes on foundational reading assessment measures. The online software application utilized was the Sound Reading Program. Students began the intervention working in…