The abrupt closure of schools globally in mid-2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted education for 1.5 billion learners, compelling an emergency shift to online teaching (UNESCO, n.d.). While personalized learning initiatives had been gaining traction, the pandemic challenged their continuity, transforming them into crisis management…

Fluency, vocabulary building, making inferences, expanding background knowledge, and metacognitive thinking are reading skills taught in schools across the country. Which of these do ELA teachers consider to be most important? It is not known which of these five areas Western Pennsylvania teachers believe has the most impact on comprehension…

Novice special education teachers have become an integral part of the public and private school systems throughout Pennsylvania. This mixed-methods research study explored the expertise and preparedness of current novice special education teachers. A combination of an electronic survey questionnaire and phone and face-to-face interviews were…

The purpose of this case study was to understand how students use reading strategies to help them comprehend informational text. Eighteen adolescent, developing readers who participated in a Reading Edge intervention at a suburban junior high school in the northeastern part of Pennsylvania answered interview questions, and 14 students met the…

This mixed methods action research study explored how students reacted to using literature circles to enhance their knowledge and understanding of reading nonfiction text as compared to students using guided reading. This study showed a minimal improvement for students participating in the literature circle group in overall understanding of…

Students who have the ability of working through text, while at the same time comprehending what they read, increase the likelihood of school success and lifelong learning (Johnson, 2006). In primary grades, teachers understand that students are learning how to read and in intermediate grades, students are reading to learn new knowledge about a…

The purpose of this study was to see if students made gains in reading achievement in the area of reading comprehension by having used a computerized reading instructional program entitled "READ 180RTM." The researcher included a qualitative component to gather teacher and parent perceptions of the use of this program. The theoretical…

Technology is an increasing part in the lives of junior high students, but little is known about how this technology affects their reading. Reading comprehension from e-books is compared to reading comprehension from conventional print books with junior high students. The problem is that students may be reading from a medium that is less than the…

This study investigated elementary teachers' observations of how a representative sample of achieving, average and struggling readers adapted the use of best practice comprehension strategies taught in the classroom as well as during instructional level guided reading time. A researcher-constructed strategy checklist was the instrument teachers…

In 2000, the National Reading Panel (NRP) identified scientifically based reading instructional practices in the five key areas of phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency vocabulary, and comprehension. The purpose of this study was to determine the strength of the relationship between the degree of implementation of scientifically based reading…

This study evaluated how comic books and graphic novels enhanced the reading comprehension of the students enrolled in the intermediate reading course at Western Pennsylvania Community College. The three research questions are: (1) How can a developmental reading course make use of comics as a learning tool? (2) What impact does reading comics…

This study examined how the use of teacher think-alouds influenced and transferred to the reading comprehension and metacognition of seventh grade middle school social studies students in two Reading Apprenticeship classrooms. The researcher conducted classroom observations at a middle school in a mid-size suburban and rural school district in…

This mixed methods study explored implementing guided reading in grades 3-5 in a suburban school district located in Southeastern Pennsylvania. The purpose of this study was to evaluate how teachers implement guided reading in their classrooms and how the use of guided reading affects student achievement in Text Structure and Vocabulary, Reading…