This paper explores learning to read for minority children who are emergent readers (aged 6-7). The research took place in a multicultural, multi-faith inner city primary school. The research concerned children learning to read and the meanings they made of the books they learnt to read with. The article concludes that using reader-response with…

Despite the generally highly individualised educational needs of children, when it comes to reading, three collective patterns of concern tend to arise. Research explicitly highlights the disparity that at-risk children and children with a disability may face in the classroom, as well as the longstanding ripple effects of early language and…

Across America, an ongoing crisis of reading underachievement exists for many African American students; reading skill proficiency is not being achieved at levels on par with their grade-level peers. The problem addressed in this study was African American students who have not met the minimum passing score on state tests are placed in reading…

This article adds picturebooks to the rich landscape of middle grades readings. It begins with a vignette that inspired this article, followed by an introduction to the changing definitions picturebooks. Next, it provides a brief overview of the different relationships between text and illustrations. Then, it discusses the value of picturebooks…

Purpose: Children with typical development vary in how much experience they need to learn words. This could be due to differences in the amount of information encoded during periods of input, consolidated between periods of input, or both. Our primary purpose is to identify whether encoding, consolidation, or both, drive individual differences in…

Visual Phonics is a multisensory teaching tool that has the potential to improve reading outcomes. The purpose of this systematic review is to examine studies on Visual Phonics to provide a comprehensive understanding of the effects on code-related skills. Thirteen studies met the inclusion criteria. The results demonstrate that Visual Phonics can…

Tableau Theatre is an instructional method that fulfills two of the most timely needs in developmental education today: enhancing student motivation and providing engaging learning activities. As a form of highly contextualized learning, the use of total body engagement stimulates brain activity, a prerequisite for learning and allows space for a…

Challenges associated with reading in the disciplines are well documented. In this article, we report on a small-scale study that was part of a larger school-university design-based research collaboration focused on improving literacy learning in Australian high schools. We discuss Paired Wide Reading (PWR), an instructional innovation designed to…

Until at least the end of adolescence, children articulate speech differently than adults. While this discrepancy is often attributed to the maturation of the speech motor system, we sought to demonstrate that the development of spoken language fluency is shaped by complex interactions across motor and cognitive domains. In this study, we…

In spite of the prevailing assumption that formal reading instruction is no longer needed once adolescents reach high school, students at the secondary level still benefit from explicit reading instruction to continue developing advanced literacy skills enabling them to access complex narrative texts. This article argues for the importance of…

This study presents results from a project to develop and pilot a new type of performance assessment of the skills used when teaching reading and writing. To provide context for this new approach, we begin by identifying the different types of knowledge that have historically been the focus of teacher assessment. Next we describe the newly…

We sought to identify the extent to which an innovative educational technology called ELCII (Early Language Comprehension Individualized Instruction) improved inference making for various populations of kindergarten students. Analyses examined student performance based on individual-level demographic characteristics (i.e., gender, race/ethnicity,…

How students learn to read and how reading is best taught are often the focus of media, public, and political criticism. The contemporary reading reform movement is the latest chapter of a long history of controversies, dating from at least the early 20th century. Throughout the decades, attention has focused on how teachers teach reading…

Despite 3 years of implementation, educators at McKinnley Elementary School (pseudonym) did not know teachers' perceptions about whether the Wilson Reading Fundations Program (WRFP) was helping K-3rd grade teachers assist struggling readers with becoming proficient in reading in the elementary grades. The purpose of this qualitative single case…

This study focused on the effect of fifteen minutes of direct phonics instruction three days per week on student achievement, of Winter MAP goals, during the Response to Intervention block, during English language arts class. The literature suggests the use of both systematic and word-based strategies for instructional strategies, more scientific…