Training in phonological awareness has brought about well-documented positive effects on learning to read in lower-primary grades. Less is known about long-term gains extending to upper-primary and junior high school. The few longitudinal studies covering at least 5 years suggest that gains in decoding are sustained, whereas effects on reading…

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the relation between morphological awareness on reading comprehension is moderated by multisyllabic word reading ability in fifth-grade students ("N" = 169, 53.7% female, 65.2% minority status, 69.2% free/reduced lunch status), oversampled for poor reading skill, when controlling for…

Teacher knowledge and instructional expertise have been found in correlational and pre- and post-test studies to be related to student reading achievement. This article summarizes data presented in this special issue and additional research to address four questions: (a) What do expert reading teachers know? (b) Why do teachers need to acquire…

In this paper I comment on recent recommendations that students' responsiveness to instruction (RTI) provides a basis for identification of students as learning disabled. I repeat an earlier argument (Gerber & Semmel, 1985) that teachers embedded in schools are naturally variable in their capacity to respond to differences in students' response to…

A total of 46 children in Grades 2 and 3 with low word-level skills were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 groups that received supplemental phonics-based reading instruction. One group received intervention October through March (21.5 hours), and one group served as a control from October through March and later received intervention March through May…

A teacher of young children shares personal experiences and professional approaches to facilitating growth in unique children. The educator's responsibility lies not in labeling differences in children, but in responding to those unique differences in the classroom by supporting students and utilizing their strengths. (Author/SW)

Perceptions of mainstreamed students with learning disabilities (n=60) regarding adaptations (e.g., altering tests, homework, assignments, instruction) made by general education teachers were compared with perceptions of low achieving (n=59) and average/high achieving (n=60) students. Differences were found in relation to elementary versus…