Elementary-level teacher Redford dispels the idea that instructional time should not be spent teaching content material because content is now Googleable. As research shows, background knowledge significantly influences basic comprehension, even in very young students; students need a core of background knowledge to decipher texts and understand…

Reading connected text--that is, multiple sentences related to each other-- requires greater skill than reading isolated words. To read and understand connected text, students must quickly recognize words, integrate what they are reading with their background knowledge, and monitor their comprehension. This document provides a summary of…

Learning to read begins at home through everyday parent-child interactions, long before children attend school. Parents' continuing support of literacy development throughout elementary school positively affects their children's reading ability. Many recent efforts to motivate parents to be involved in their child's literacy development involve…

Reading aloud (RA) is a learning strategy commonly used to help younger students develop language comprehension skills and in adult literacy and language courses to help students master the pronunciation of words, grammar, and intonation. However, we know of no studies to date that investigate the possible benefits of RA at the college or…

This is a companion to the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) practice guide, "Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten through 3rd Grade" (ED566956). This guide is organized according to the four recommendations and how-to steps from the WWC practice guide. The activities follow the typical developmental…

This Kindergarten Teacher's Guide provides information for kindergarten teachers on how to support families as they practice foundational reading skills at home. It serves as a companion to the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade. Both guides present four…

Recent efforts to motivate parents' involvement in their child's literacy development involve informing parents about how to incorporate literacy development into daily routines. Teacher leadership and communication are critical--the more teachers encourage and assist parents and caregivers in supporting their child's literacy development, the…

For the past few decades, stylistics has emerged as a discipline that encompasses both literary criticism and linguistics. The integration of both disciplines opened many opportunities for English literature and language teachers to get creative in their teaching--by introducing the stylistic approach in their classrooms. However, in a typical…

When students experience reading difficulties--or even before they do--teachers can use specialized knowledge to help them achieve success. This overview of the International Dyslexia Association's "Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teachers of Reading" describes those reading and literacy standards and provides resources for teacher…

The most effective way to understand what a child knows about the reading process is to take a running record. In "Running Records", Mary Shea demonstrates how teachers can use this powerful tool to design lessons that decrease reading difficulties, build on strengths, and stimulate motivation, ensuring that children develop self-sustaining…

This qualitative case study illustrates and compares the metacognitive strategies that a grade-3 female student used while reading narrative and informational texts. Data were collected from interviews, observations, and videotaping of the participant's narrative and informational text oral reading sessions and examined using thematic analysis.…

Struggling readers may regularly worry about reading at an appropriate speed and intonation. Fluency is a "hot" topic according to Jack Cassidy's annual reading survey published in "Reading Today," in which he interviews various literacy experts throughout the United States on the hot and not-so-hot reading topics. Fluency…

The purpose of the study was to examine the effects of two instructional approaches designed to improve the reading fluency of 2nd-grade children. The first approach was based on Stahl and Heubach's (2005) fluency-oriented reading instruction (FORI) and involved the scaffolded, repeated reading of grade-level texts over the course of each week.…

The author describes 10 classroom activities that are designed to promote reading comprehension and organizational skills in the context of solving math problems. These lessons help students to clarify the information within math problems, identify what operations are necessary, and express their solutions more accurately and precisely. A…

This study reports the results of a peer-mediated intervention, total class peer tutoring, on the academic performance of six urban students at risk for reading failure. A multiple baseline design across subjects was used to evaluate the effects of this intervention. The results showed that five of the six students significantly increased their…