In this mixed method research, we examined the effects of reading and singing software program (RSSP) as a reading intervention on struggling readers' reading achievement as measured by the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, the high stakes state test administered in the state of Florida, at one elementary school. Our team defined struggling…

We tested the effects of teaching reading skills through U.S. History content for 38 eighth-grade poor readers whose reading ability ranged from 2nd to 4th grade levels. Half of the students received special education services and half of the students were English Language Learners. Students were taught to decode multisyllabic words, learn…

This study evaluates the impacts and costs of the Reading Partners program, which uses community volunteers to provide one-on-one tutoring to struggling readers in under-resourced elementary schools. The evaluation uses an experimental design. Students were randomly assigned within 19 different Reading Partners sites to a program or control…

Despite advances in the science of teaching reading, there still exists a small percentage of students who fail to make the expected progress in reading-related skills, notwithstanding attempts at intervention. Even if these struggling readers learn to decode adequately, fluency remains a problem for many, and little is known about the…

Students entering high school face many new academic challenges. One of the most important is their ability to read and understand more complex text in literature, mathematics, science, and social studies courses as they navigate through a rigorous high school curriculum. The Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Northwest conducted a study to…

A pre-post experimental design with 6-week delayed posttest was implemented to investigate the effects of reading comprehension strategy (RCS) instruction with and without attribution retraining (AR) on reading outcomes for seventh, eighth, and ninth graders with learning and other mild disabilities. Students were randomly assigned to one of three…

The Secondary School Literacy Project (SSLiP) is a partnership between the Bay Area Coalition of Essential Schools (BayCES) and the Strategic Literacy Initiative at WestEd (SLI). SSLiP is a professional development and capacity building program for teams of teachers in the BayCES network of schools. During the 1999-2000 school year, seven school…

These papers are partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Science Degree in Education at Winona State University in Winona, Minnesota. The cohort included a variety of licensure areas that represent most levels and content areas of K-12 education. The students were encouraged to keep their questions and hypothesis directed at…

An action research project investigated the effect of reciprocal teaching instruction and use on the comprehension of seventh-grade general English students. Reciprocal teaching is a form of dialogue structured around four skills--question generation, summarization, clarification, and prediction. These techniques are used in small group…

A quasi-experimental action research evaluated a program for computerized self-assessment of reading comprehension (The Accelerated Reader) in two schools in severely socio-economically disadvantaged areas. Finds the program, even when less than fully implemented, yielded gains in reading achievement superior to gains from regular classroom…

Investigates the effects of an experimental set of reading lessons focusing on strategies applied to social studies textbook material. Finds that, in three of four comparisons, students receiving weekly strategy lessons were better at summarizing social studies material than were control subjects. Finds no differences between groups in terms of…

Investigates the effects on reading comprehension of students attending an elementary school where the Four-Blocks framework is utilized (School A) and students attending an elementary school where a basal reader approach is utilized (School B). Compares the ability of four classes of second-grade students to give an oral retelling and answer…

A study examined the effectiveness of the Reading Recovery program in the Irving, Texas, Independent School District. Subjects were students discontinued from the Reading Recovery program because they scored at or above the 40th national percentile, selected students from Chapter/Title I programs on campuses that did not implement Reading…

This study assessed the effectiveness of a metacognitive and reciprocal teaching approach for improving the word identification and reading comprehension skills of upper primary poor readers in a regular classroom situation. To improve word identification skills, experimental subjects were given metacognitive training in the analysis and…

Discusses research concerning the four reciprocal teaching (RT) strategies: predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing as they relate to fifth-grade teachers who had exposure to constructivist thinking conducted as part of the normal school day. Finds that when teachers consistently and clearly modeled all four RT strategies, students…