In the United States, approximately 2.5 million students are diagnosed as having a learning disability and the majority of those children are placed in special education because of an inability to read as expected. As a result of this diagnosis, these children may be placed in special education classrooms--classrooms that are separate from the…

Teaching a child to read is one of the greatest gifts we can give to that individual and to society as a whole, and yet many students exit school without the necessary literacy skills. For decades, research has demonstrated the importance of phonemic awareness in the development of the alphabetic principle, a prerequisite for competent reading,…

The goal of this study was to adapt scientifically-based measures for use in identifying Arabic-speaking children at risk for reading difficulties in the early primary grades. One hundred-fifty Arabic-speaking Palestinian children, living in diverse demographic areas within the West Bank, were tested at the beginning of second grade on an Arabic…

This study compares native English, Spanish, Lao, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Arabic, and all other ELL students over one, two, three, and four-year spans to determine if certain groups appear to face more difficulties in developing early reading mastery by third grade. This study also examines whether socio-economic status impacts the…

A quasi-experimental pretest/posttest group design was used to determine whether computer-assisted fluency instruction is as effective as print-based, teacher-led fluency instruction in improving fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension skills in third grade students experiencing delayed fluency development. Fifty participants were randomly assigned…

In this "Struggling Readers" department, the author describes a collaborative lesson--a professional development strategy adapted from Reading Recovery. Collaborative lessons involve a small group of educators who collaborate to help a student who is struggling with reading. While collaborative lessons were initially designed by Reading Recovery…

Concerns regarding literacy levels in the United States are long standing. Debates have existed for decades regarding the most effective ways to teach reading, especially the polarizing dilemma of how much to focus on decoding versus code-emphasis and whole language instruction. Fortunately, as a result of concentrated research efforts and…

Reading standards are regarded by many as the true yardstick by which to measure school effectiveness, and the relative standards achieved by different generations are often debated by adults. Some young people do not perceive reading to be of anything like such importance, however, using digital communication habitually and easily. Each year a…

In this article, the authors present a snapshot of how one kindergarten and Reading Recovery teacher organized instruction in her classroom, enabling her to provide constructively responsive reading assessment and instruction for her developing and struggling readers. (Contains 2 figures.)

Reading Recovery (RR) is a short-term early intervention designed to help the lowest-achieving readers in first grade reach average levels of classroom performance in literacy. Students identified to receive Reading Recovery meet individually with a specially trained Reading Recovery (RR) teacher every school day for 30-minute lessons over a…

Many educators are reluctant to use scripted instruction, reporting that scripts are mechanical in nature and only appropriate for low-level skills. This study sought to investigate the impact of a supplemental program's script on the rate of on-task and off-task instructional opportunities offered by the instructor for students to practice the…

This 8-week case study involved evaluating the impact of the Reading Recovery intervention program on students with reading difficulties. The participants of this case study were 2 at-risk first-grade students selected for participation in the Reading Recovery program, which provided 30 minutes daily of one-on-one instruction. This study employed…

The purpose of this article was twofold: (1) to explore the feasibility of the regression discontinuity design (RDD) in response-to-intervention implementation research and (2) to expand upon the limited research on vocabulary instruction for kindergarten students who are at risk for reading failure due to limited vocabularies. This pilot study…

Research on multi-tiered, research-based reading interventions provides strong evidence for the critical role of early reading instruction and the benefits of early intervention for children who are struggling to learn to read (Blachman et al., 2004; Denton, Fletcher, Anthony, & Francis, 2006). Research on effective approaches for older…

This research examined the effectiveness of an emergent literacy intervention for prekindergarten children at risk for reading failure, to replicate and improve on significant findings from Year 1 of the study. Data are reported for 266 children in 72 child care and preschool sites in Year 2 of the study and for 374 children at 102 sites in Year…