Arguing the issue of fairness and the additional advantage for test takers with visual impairments, some professionals have expressed negative attitudes toward test accommodation. However, researchers have found that the validity of test accommodations increases when the test scores of students who need a particular accommodation increases, while…

Fluency is a critical skill of adept readers. As listening to read alouds and performing Readers Theatre scripts are two prevalent strategies that can increase students' fluency skills, this article provides suggestions in using these strategies with digital texts through free, online resources. Digital texts can be accessed using a desktop,…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of structured story reading intervention, "S"tory re"T"elling and higher order thinking for "E"nglish "L"anguage and "L"iteracy "A"cquisition (STELLA), delivered to 38 Hispanic English language learners (ELL) placed in an enhanced transitional bilingual programme over 2 years from…

Community-based volunteer programs to support children's book reading have existed in Japan for the past 70 years or so. Recently, because of the national emphasis on providing child-rearing support for families with young children, more programs are being offered to encourage parent-child shared book reading starting when children are very young.…

The author describes her two-year experience of living in China and how this molded her attitudes about English language learners in Texas. Examples drawn from the Nanjing International School show how one school worked to meet the needs of a diverse group of students, with more than 70% learning English as a second language. The practical…

When bilingual children enter formal reading education, host language proficiency becomes increasingly important. This study investigated the relation between socioeconomic status (SES), maternal language use, reading input, and vocabulary in a sample of 111 six-year-old children of first- and second-generation Turkish immigrant parents in the…

Whole-class choral reading (WCCR) is an oral reading fluency strategy that can help older elementary students in need of fluency development. Implementation is simple and requires only a few minutes per day. WCCR can be easily adapted for use with narrative and expository texts and allows all students the opportunity to practice within an…

This longitudinal study assessed the literacy development of native Arabic-speaking children from kindergarten to the end of first grade, focusing on the role of home literacy activities (mother-child shared book reading and joint writing). The contribution of these activities in kindergarten to children's reading and writing at the end of…

In an effort to find evidence of the effectiveness of an accommodation which students with reading based disabilities are allowed to use on state assessments, a group of 11 fifth graders identified as having a reading based disability and having at least one reading goal in their Individual Education Programs (IEP) were given a series of short…

A paired reading program was implemented for 195 Hong Kong preschoolers (mean age = 4.7 years) and their parents from families with a wide range of family income. The preschoolers were randomly assigned to experimental or waitlist control groups. The parents in the experimental group received 12 sessions of school-based training on paired reading…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a modified system of least intrusive prompts on text-dependent listening comprehension for four middle-school-aged students with intellectual disability and autism during read-alouds of adapted grade-level biographies. A system of least intrusive prompts was modified by inserting a rule…

The main aim of this research was to study whether memory dynamics influence older people's choices to the same extent as younger's ones. To do so, we adapted the retrieval-practice paradigm to produce variations in memory accessibility of information on which decisions were made later. Based on previous results, we expected to observe…

This pilot study sought to develop and evaluate the use of a treatment package that included systematic and direct instruction on acquisition of literacy skills aligned with middle school English/Language Arts standards for students with moderate to severe disabilities, including autism. Participants included five teachers and 15 middle school…

Welcome to Port Discovery's "Tiny's Diner" where children can be seen doing the chicken dance or putting pickles on their heads. What do these activities have to do with promoting nutrition through early literacy activities? Educators know that young children learn through play, which can include using drama, games, movement,…

This article shares the insights of a tutor as she works with a fourth-grade African American girl. For this case study, the authors use interactive read-alouds and writing samples to document the reading and writing events of this yearlong tutorial experience. They report on the power of critical literacy to engage a developing reader and improve…