Background/purpose: This article presents the results of a pedagogical experiment involving 602 elementary school children from the north of Portugal. Based on the principles of outdoor learning, this experience was carried out in a non-formal education context during the post-pandemic school year - Férias VIVES. The aim of this initiative was to…

Student engagement during reading instruction, including during small group and individualized intensive reading instruction, is critical for student success. If students are not engaged with instruction, they are not learning. This study examined student reading engagement during individualized intensive literacy tutoring in a summer reading…

Open-ended learning environments (OELEs) involve high learner agency in defining learning goals and multiple pathways to achieve those goals. These tasks involve learners transitioning through self-regulated learning (SRL) phases by actively setting goals, applying different strategies for those goals, and monitoring performance to update their…

The present study evaluated the effectiveness of a non-randomized summer reading program offered by a school district meeting or exceeding all National Summer Learning Project recommendations. The district had 10 years of experience delivering the program to Grades 1-5 students with or at risk of reading disabilities. Voluntary participation had…

Despite extensive research suggesting the importance of students developing strong foundational math skills during early grades, more than 60% of 4th graders in the United States lack proficiency in mathematics. Such data are influenced by several factors, including summer learning loss in math, negative impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic, and a…

The role of storybooks in offering an educational resource that promotes young children's cognitive and creative development has been recognised in the previous literature. The small-scale exploratory study reported here investigated children's senses of humour through pop-up storybook production. A workshop in Hong Kong, entitled Storybook…

Richard Allington reviews the nature of the reading achievement gap between students from low-income and high-income families, concluding that the limited access to children's books experienced by children from low-income families lies at the base of the problem. The fact that children from low-income families lose reading achievement every summer…

Writing in school has long been disconnected and inauthentic to multilingual learners due to its monolingual, language-focused, and standardized features. Although more and more researchers have called for and explored newer asset-based writing pedagogies, such as digital multimodal writing, to support diverse learners in response to emerging…

Archival data were analyzed with piecewise growth models to determine the seasonal growth of students not reading proficiently who did (treatment students = 144) and did not (control students = 1113) participate in their school district's summer reading program. The rising first- through fifth graders (48% female) were predominately White (74%)…

Spatial reasoning skills are a great predictor of students' Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) achievement and attainment. However, researchers have mainly viewed spatial reasoning skills as an internal cognitive process that is measured through the administration of psychometric testing and laboratory experiments. Further,…

Struggling writers often need more instructional support than is present in commercially available process writing curricula. In this study, we employed a one-group, pretest-posttest design to evaluate whether 41 struggling primary grade writers who attended a university-based summer learning program would increase in writing ability, given a…

Given his role as Director of Technology, it may come as a surprise that Devon Jacobs is a staunch supporter of a no phones/limited technology approach for young students. In fact, when applying for his position at North Country School/Camp Treetops, he was drawn to the school's commitment to a reduced screen time, reduced media environment for…

The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to investigate the use of specific vocabulary instructional strategies during a six-week summer program to determine if the iReady universal screener measured an impact on student vocabulary and reading comprehension. The study utilized a treatment group (n = 34) and a control group (n = 40) from…

Mathematics educators and researchers have increasingly integrated social justice-oriented tasks into their classrooms. Teaching mathematics for social justice (TMfSJ) aims to help students develop mathematical knowledge in ways that promote students' abilities to critique the communities of which they are members (Ellis & Malloy, 2007;…

Drawing on administrative data and reading achievement data provided by two Midwestern school districts for three schools, we analyze the literacy impacts of a replicable summer reading program, Kids Read Now. The program includes both school-based and home-based components that together encourage students to remain engaged in reading high-quality…