Although existing research describes how teacher candidates (TCs) have incorporated translanguaging pedagogies through practice-based assignments, little research closely examines how TCs engage in discursive shifts, or moment-to-moment linguistic decisions, in translanguaging pedagogies during literacy instruction in their field placement…

Significant traumatic events affect communities and schools. Teachers need tools to help navigate challenging conversations with their students. Consequently, we utilized our children's literature course on the use of picture books that would invite dialogue supporting children responding to traumatic events. Specifically, we reconceptualized an…

This article describes design-based research undertaken by two teacher educators to support elementary preservice teachers (PSTs) in integrating culturally responsive teaching practices with reading methods. The study described was motivated by calls for teacher preparation programs to be more intentional about supporting PSTs in synthesizing…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of an 18-day summer tutoring program in which graduate student tutors delivered 15 minutes of differentiated reading instruction (DRI) and a 30-minute interactive read-aloud (IRA) lesson each day. Students in grades K-5 (N = 179) attending a summer program at one urban elementary school…

This article explores how the general term of assessment literacy can be specified to the area of reading through the lens of the informal reading inventory, Qualitative Reading Inventory-5. This article will investigate the common misconceptions that teachers, who were enrolled in a graduate program to become state-certified specialized literacy…

In this study, the authors examine the learning of 48 preservice teachers (PSTs) taking a literacy course in special education and the primary-grade struggling readers they tutored in a field component of the course. The primary purpose of this exploratory study was to examine the effects of the course and tutoring on PSTs' knowledge and…

This article highlights the potential of teacher read-alouds of informational texts for building academic vocabulary. These represent the general, high-utility words with Greek and Latin roots and the discipline-specific words associated with increased academic rigor of curriculum in the upper elementary grades. The author provides the theoretical…

Informal reading inventories (IRI) and curriculum-based measures of reading (CBM-R) have continued importance in instructional planning, but raters have exhibited difficulty in accurately identifying students' miscues. To identify and tabulate scorers' mismarkings, this study employed examiners and raters who scored 15,051 words from 108 passage…

The purpose of this paper is to discuss a pilot study conducted in a graduate action research class that sought to investigate the impact of multicultural literature experiences on third-grade students' ability to make empathetic connections in their writing and discussions about literature. Conducted as participant action research, five…

This study investigated the efficacy of the Fluency Development Lesson (FDL) in improving reading achievement in primary grade struggling readers. 30 readers, enrolled in a summer reading clinic, participated in daily 40-min mini-reading lessons across 5 weeks. During the fluency lessons, readers practiced and developed their literacy skills…

Reading speed is commonly used as an index of reading fluency. However, reading speed is not a consistent predictor of text comprehension, when speed and comprehension are measured on the same text within the same reader. This might be due to the somewhat ambiguous nature of reading speed, which is sometimes regarded as a feature of the reading…

This study compared the impact of 2 types of small-group interventions targeting below-level 3rd-grade students. The study compared WordWork decoding and spelling instruction (Calfee, Miller, Norman, Wilson, & Trainin, 2006; Calfee & Patrick, 1995), which includes attention to articulation and metacognition, with a more traditional…

In a technological society, demands for higher literacy are ever increasing, creating grievous consequences for those who fail to meet these demands (National Research Council, 1998). Both legislative mandates, such as NCLB, and developments in the provision of reading instruction, such as RtI, have increased the demand for high quality tutoring…

"Harvard Education Letter" is published bimonthly at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This issue of "Harvard Education Letter" contains the following articles: (1) School-Based Coaching: A Revolution in Professional Development--or Just the Latest Fad? (Alexander Russo); (2) Fluency Tests Help Identify Struggling…