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…

More than two-thirds of middle school students do not read proficiently. Research has shown that targeted interventions using explicit instruction methods can improve reading outcomes for struggling readers. A central feature of explicit instruction is the systematic implementation of instructional interactions, but it is not clear what specific…

The purpose of this study was to assess school psychologists' knowledge of dyslexia interventions and basic language constructs. Participants' total levels of knowledge from these two areas were examined to determine if significant differences in dyslexia knowledge and definitional knowledge related to degree level, taking a graduate literacy…

This review aimed to synthesize the group design literature to identify the evidence-based reading comprehension interventions for children with ASD. The primary aim was to identify which reading comprehension interventions had demonstrated positive effects for students with ASD in group design studies. This review was initiated using both…

Syntactic knowledge, the implicit and explicit knowledge of syntax, is a necessary--but often overlooked--component of proficient reading (e.g., Deacon & Kieffer, 2018). Though some research exists on effective syntactic instruction, such as sentence combining (Neville & Searls, 1985; Wilkinson & Patty, 1993), researchers have called…

Public policies targeting individuals based on need often impose disproportionate burden on communities that lack the resources to implement these policies effectively. In an elementary school setting, I examine whether community-level interventions focusing on similar needs and providing resources to build capacity in these communities could…

Explicit instruction is a high-leverage practice for special education and is associated with improved learning for students with disabilities (Hughes et al., 2019). The high-leverage practices are 22 critical practices in special education that are effective for improving outcomes for a broad range of students with and at risk for disabilities…

Curriculum-based measures (CBMs), which allow educators to monitor progress over time and make instructional decisions based on student performance, represent a fixture of general approaches to reading and data-based instructional frameworks. However, evidence supporting the use of CBM for students with intellectual disabilities is limited. This…

The current study evaluated the use of the self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) instructional approach to teach the TRAP mnemonic (Think before reading, Read a paragraph, Ask what is the main idea/important details, Paraphrase the paragraph) and its impact on youth reading comprehension performance. The TRAP mnemonic was taught to an…

American Samoa, a U.S. territory, has grappled with low reading scores similar to other mainland schools. As a result, different reading interventions were implemented over the years. The problem studied was that despite using Achieve 3000 as a reading intervention for students in the local high school in American Samoa, reading scores had…

The Cellfield reading intervention is based on the multi-deficit theory of reading difficulties and addresses several foundation skills of reading simultaneously. Existing research has confirmed that the Cellfield intervention leads to improvement in reading skill directly following the intervention, but little data exist to determine the…

Designing rigorous studies to identify technology-based interventions to improve K-12 student reading skills require intervention researchers to take a "road less traveled." This chapter presents that road using the Knowledge Acquisition and Transformation Expansions (KATE) intervention as a case study. An early version of KATE has shown…

The ability to read is fundamental in determining an individual's academic success and social integration, and it is also known to have an impact on other cognitive abilities. A lack of foundational pre-reading skills can accumulate later, causing reading and learning problems. Early diagnosis and development of these skills are therefore…

There is a gap in reading scores between blind/low-vision students and their sighted peers. The problem addressed in this study was that the reading interventions currently in use for blind/low vision students are not successful in closing the reading achievement gap at a Midwest secondary school for the blind and visually impaired. The purpose of…

Behavior and academic outcomes in school are interrelated; students who struggle with academics are likelier to exhibit troublesome behavior and students who struggle with behavior tend to fall behind academically. Multitiered systems of support (MTSS) offer frameworks for providing increasingly intensive support for students with academic and…