In this study, we describe young students' actions at point of difficulty in reading and examine changes in their strategic use of sources of information. We examined errors from running records of first graders who entered Reading Recovery (RR) in the fall and ended the year reading at the first-grade level compared with RR first graders who did…

The purpose of the study was to address possible text complexity shifts across the past six decades for a continually best-selling first-grade core reading program. The anthologies of one publisher's seven first-grade core reading programs were examined using computer-based analytics, dating from 1962 to 2013. Variables were Overall Text…

The research question was, "What text characteristics do primary teachers think are most important for early grades text complexity?" Teachers from across the United States accomplished a two-part task. First, to stimulate teachers' thinking about important text characteristics, primary teachers completed an online paired-text…

The Common Core set a standard for all children to read increasingly complex texts throughout schooling. The purpose of the present study was to explore text characteristics specifically in relation to early-grades text complexity. Three hundred fifty primary-grades texts were selected and digitized. Twenty-two text characteristics were identified…

Decodable books based on previous classroom instruction are the most frequently used texts for 1st grade reading instruction in public schools, yet no empirical studies exist demonstrating their efficacy or their benefits for beginning readers. This study attempts to address this gap in the research literature by analyzing the reading behaviors of…