The current investigation studied the effects of a computer software program of the oral reading fluency and comprehension of eight, first grade students. These students were identified as being either "at-risk" or "some-risk" for reading failure on the DIBELS oral reading fluency winter benchmark assessment. A multiple probe…

Fluent oral reading is essential for success in elementary school. In this study, we investigated the effectiveness of enhanced reading fluency instruction for struggling readers. The intervention was provided to small groups of students at risk for reading difficulties. Students were assessed on key early literacy skills. Second-grade students…

This study was designed to determine the contributions of metalinguistic skill and psycholinguistic processing ability to children's ability to detect the ambiguity of sentences and the relationship among all three factors to early reading ability. A total of 20 first graders and 20 second graders were given tasks testing the following abilities:…

Young children entering school with poor oral vocabulary skills may be doubly disadvantaged. Their poor oral vocabulary skills will likely impede their attempts to become proficient readers while also possibly increasing the frequency of their problem behaviors. Dialogic reading (DR) is a scientifically validated shared storybook reading…

Alarms about a "literacy crisis" among young people have been sounded on a regular basis for more than a century. Yet as each generation of students matures, it is able to accomplish the reading and writing tasks necessary for society to continue. Perhaps then, rather than sounding more alarms, it is time to consider what anxieties, particularly…

Because children living in poverty and minorities consistently demonstrate persistent reading difficulties (Adams, 1990), Congress intervened and passed the No Child Left Behind Act (U.S. Department of Education, 2006) mandating that scientifically based reading research be implemented in the primary grades. Quantitative studies presented in the…

The purpose of this study was to determine if the implementation of a Response to Intervention framework had a positive impact on student reading achievement in urban elementary schools. This was a causal-comparative study that examined the reading performance of a sample of kindergarten through grade three students who experienced the Response to…

Serious reading problems exist among middle school learners as evidenced by declining national reading scores and increased dropout rates. In response to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) expectations in reading, several experts have promoted a scripted repeated reading strategy such as readers' theater as a possible approach to improving student…

In 2000, National Reading Panelists (NRP) reported that computer delivered reading instruction has potential for promoting the reading skills of students at-risk for reading failure. However, panelists also noted a scarcity of data present in the literature on the effects of computer-based reading instruction. This preliminary investigation…

The policies underlying the specific learning disability (SLD) regulations in the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) are analyzed. The analysis focuses on the Response-to-Intervention (RTI) provision ("if the child responds to scientific, research-based intervention") as a diagnostic model,…

The importance of early identification of children at risk for reading failure is clearly established in the literature. The purpose of this longitudinal retrospective study was to further define the relationship between the development of prereading skills and later reading outcome in two groups of children; a group of reading-disabled children…

The authors used a pretest-posttest control group design with random assignment to evaluate whether early reading failure decreases children's motivation to practice reading. First, they investigated whether 60 first-grade children would report substantially different levels of interest in reading as a function of their relative success or failure…

Current policy, media and curriculum initiatives across western nations are drawing literacy and literacy pedagogy toward enticingly simplistic understandings of literacy as commodity. Increasingly they focus on "fixing" perceived literacy problems by assuming the primacy of early years literacy and "top-up" intervention…

Direct, explicit, and systematic instruction of critical skills has been a hallmark of effective teaching for many years. In this study, we implemented a quasi-experimental pre-/post-test design with nonequivalent groups to determine the effectiveness of syllable skills instruction on reading achievement. Classes were randomly assigned to control…

"Reading Recovery"[R] is a short-term tutoring intervention designed to serve the lowest-achieving (bottom 20%) first-grade students. The goals of "Reading Recovery"[R] include: promoting literacy skills; reducing the number of first-grade students who are struggling to read; and preventing long-term reading difficulties. The…