Students often struggle to comprehend complex text. In response, we conducted an initial, year-long study of Quality Talk, a teacher-facilitated, small-group discussion approach designed to enhance students' basic and high-level comprehension, in two fourth-grade classrooms. Specifically, teachers delivered instructional mini-lessons on discourse…

Students often struggle to comprehend complex text. In response, we conducted an initial, year-long study of Quality Talk, a teacher-facilitated, small-group discussion approach designed to enhance students' basic and high-level comprehension, in two 4th-grade classrooms. Specifically, teachers delivered instructional mini-lessons on discourse…

The Every Student Succeed Act (ESSA) brings significant changes as well as opportunities for schools to improve their students' academic outcomes. One proposed regulation is for states to analyze the performance of student subgroups separately in order to show how states are levelling the playing field over time to ensure educational equity. This…

A data set from an urban Midwestern school district was mined to explore how the technology-based reading enrichment known as Mindplay Virtual Reading Coach (MVRC) affects children's performance on the English Language Arts (ELA) Standards state-wide assessment (N = 6098 students from Grades 3 to 9). ELA data from two times points were available,…

The present study examined the impact of the Simultaneous Multisensory Institute for Language Arts (SMILA) approach on the reading proficiency of 39 students between the ages of 7-11 participating in a summer reading program. The summer reading clinic draws students from the surrounding community which is located in a large urban district in the…

A latent growth model was used to investigate the longer term efficacy of phonics and integrated language arts instruction as well as amount of such instruction on children's reading development, using the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study data set (kindergarten through fifth grade). Type and amount of instruction were…

Research has demonstrated that poor readers may demonstrate a variety of language deficits (e.g., Adams, 1990), and children with language difficulties have difficulty reading later in life (e.g., Catts, Fey, Zhang, & Tomblin, 1999). Teachers are likely to be faced with the challenge of implementing programming to meet the needs of children…