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…

A study explored 18 Georgia third graders' perceptions of literacy teaching and learning during the second year of their teacher's transition from a traditional, textbook-based approach to a whole language, literature-based approach. Data gathering included 8 months of observation and of in-depth interviews with students. Analysis revealed that…

Five research reports on the use of instructional modules, originally published in the Atlanta "Journal and Constitution" as "Improving Reading Skills" and widely used in Georgia as the "Athens Model," are summarized in this paper. For research purposes, the modules were concentrated in time as a high saturation…

A study examined how topic interest and brief metacognitive strategy instruction affected learning from reading. Subjects were 81 third graders (33 females, 48 males) randomly assigned to 4 groups. All the students attended 1 of 10 third-grade classes in an elementary school located in a middle- and lower-socioeconomic status area in central…

Intended for use in the planning of reading programs for Georgia schools, this research review was undertaken to assist in identifying knowledge about reading and to derive implications for reading instruction within the state's schools. The report is organized into six sections. The first deals with the elementary level and covers the areas of…

Fifty instructional modules designed to improve newspaper reading skills were field tested in this study. During a 50-day period, modules were used by Wilkes County, Georgia teachers as they saw fit in seventh, eighth, and ninth grade classes primarily for 338 students with poor reading skills. In summary, the effectiveness of the instructional…

Writing to Read (WTR), a project of the International Business Machine Corporation (IBM), is a language development program designed to facilitate reading, writing, listening and speaking skills of kindergarten and first grade students. This paper reports on an evaluation of WTR in a large suburban school district in Georgia seeking answers to the…

A study examined the effects of instruction in meaningful units on the comprehension and fluency of poor readers in the fourth grade. Subjects were five fourth-grade students in a northeast Georgia school classified as poor readers. Method of instruction included modeling smooth reading with appropriate junctures and good intonation. The…

The state of Georgia not only assesses the generic teaching competencies that are necessary for all teachers seeking certification, but also administers 28 separate criterion referenced tests, each for a different content-specialty area. Among the most recent of these tests is the Reading Specialist Test, the development of which involved…