Elementary School Reading Research Articles

Associations Between Reading Achievement and Independent Reading in Early Elementary School: A Genetically Informative Cross-Lagged Study

This study used a cross-lagged twin design to examine reading achievement and independent reading from 10 to 11 years (n = 436 twin pairs). Reading achievement at age 10 significantly predicted independent reading at age 11. The alternative path, from independent reading at age 10 to reading achievement at age 11, was not significant. Individual differences in reading achievement and independent reading at both ages were primarily due to genetic influences. Furthermore, individual differences in independent reading at age 11 partly reflected genetic influences on reading achievement at age 10. These findings suggest that genetic influences that contribute to individual differences in children's reading abilities also influence the extent to which children actively seek out and create opportunities to read.

A Study of Layout Design of Elementary School Reading Textbook for the Elementary Student's Emotional Development - A Comparative Study of Effectiveness of Illustrations in Elementary Reading Textbooks for 3rd Grade in Between Korea and USA -

A Study of Layout Design of Elementary School Reading Textbook for the Elementary Student's Emotional Development - A Comparative Study of Effectiveness of Illustrations in Elementary Reading Textbooks for 3rd Grade in Between Korea and USA -

50 Poisonous Questions: A Book with Bite by T. L. Kyi

Kyi, Tanya L. 50 Poisonous Questions: A Book with Bite. Illus. Ross Kinnaird. Toronto: Annick Press, 2011. Print. This is the second book in the 50 questions series published by Annick Press. In this case the questions are all centered on toxins of various types such as “Can Sheep Cure Snake Bites?” and “Why Was the Hatter Mad?” It consists of eight chapters with titles such as: “Lethal Leaves”, “Murderous Villains” and “Spills and Disasters”. The answers guide young readers through a series of factoids that act as a gateway to learning about world history, the environment and life sciences. A wide range of time periods and geographical locations are covered. For example, one answer is set in 600 BC and involves how the city state of Delphi in ancient Greece defeated the city state of Kirrha by contaminating their water supply with poisonous hellebore leaves. A more contemporary example is the deadly sarin gas attack on a Japanese subway carried out by members of the Shinriko cult in 1995. There is also a significant amount of Canadian content: a deadly spider in a Manitoba classroom, mercury poisoning in Quebec and the discovery of a University of Alberta anthropologist regarding what happened to members of the ill-fated Franklin expedition. In addition to the questions, it also includes features such as the “poison puzzle” riddles to challenge readers’ powers of deduction and to reinforce what they have been learning. One particularly intriguing example is the case of the umbrella murderer involving a Bulgarian secret service agent. The author also presents information in the form of “Foul Facts” and mini-articles such as “Sprinting for Strychnine”. The book is illustrated with whimsical cartoon images on a toxic green background highlighted with skulls, cross-bones and warning signs. The look and feel is sure to pique the interest of mid to late elementary school readers and is recommended for grade four or age nine and above. The overall tone and language of the book is light-hearted and not overly academic. It does include a list of resources for further reading, a brief bibliography and an index. There are only 34 resources listed in the bibliography, which is less than one per question. However, given that the articles are designed to be brief and engaging rather than a comprehensive literature review this is not inappropriate. This book is entertaining and informative and could be used as supplementary classroom material on a variety of biology, environmental or history related topics. Recommended: 3 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Kim Frail

Rethinking the Relationship Between Reading and Behavior in Early Elementary School

ABSTRACT Considerable research has investigated the link between academic achievement and social behavior. The authors set the context for their work by reviewing some of the research that has been done. To address similarities and limitations in previous research, they included concurrent ratings of behavior from teachers and children's performance on multiple measures of reading in their analyses. The authors provide an empirical analysis of the relationship between behavior and achievement using structural equation modeling that illustrated comparable outcomes to previous research and discuss their findings as a base for directing attention to the importance of teaching behavior as well as academic skills in efforts to prevent learning problems and failure in school.

PECULIARITIES OF USING INTERACTIVE TEACHING METHODS IN READING LESSONS

The article reveals the essence of the concept of interactive technology, their main provisions, described the benefits of using interactive teaching methods with traditional. Also analyzed various types of interactive teaching methods and provides guidelines for their use in the classroom of the Ukrainian reading in modern elementary school.

The Role of Content Literacy in an Effective RTI Program

Response to Intervention as a model for an elementary or middle school reading program is predicated on the idea that effective instruction will prevent most reading difficulties from ever occurring. The frontline of prevention is Tier I or the general education classroom. The classroom is also where students should receive high‐quality content literacy instruction. Along with the expanding influence of RTI, the new common core standards with their emphasis on literacy in the service of content learning is likely to exert additional influence on classroom teachers to provide responsive content literacy instruction to all students.

Fourth Graders as Models for Teachers: Teaching and Learning 6+1 Trait Writing as a Collaborative Experience

Performance on standardized writing assessments indicates that less than one-third of American K‐12 students are proficient in writing. Despite this statistic, the current emphasis on reading in elementary schools means preservice elementary teachers may observe little writing instruction during field experiences. This article presents the results of a semester-long collaborative writing exchange designed in response to these problems. Qualitative methods were used to determine how 22 elementary students' writing improved as a result of helping a cohort of five student teachers learn to use the 6+1 Trait® Writing Model for Improving Student Writing. The findings have implications for classroom teachers, teacher educators, and teacher preparation programs.

What is a reading error?

ABSTRACTEarly efforts to apply knowledge of dialect differences to reading stressed the importance of the distinction between differences in pronunciation and mistakes in reading. This study develops a method of estimating the probability that a given oral reading that deviates from the text is a true reading error by observing the semantic impact of the given pronunciation on the child's reading of the text that immediately follows. A diagnostic oral reading test was administered to 627 children who scored in the 33rd percentile range and below on state-mandated assessments in reading in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Atlanta, Georgia, and California elementary schools. Subjects were African American, European American, and Latino, including Latinos who learned to read in Spanish and in English first. For 12 types of dialect-related deviations from the text that were studied, the error rates in reading the following text were calculated for correct readings, incorrect readings, and potential errors. For African Americans, many of these potential errors behaved like correct readings. The opposite pattern was found for Latinos who learned to read in Spanish first: most types of potential errors showed the high percentage of following errors that is characteristic of true errors.

The Impact of Professional Development to Infuse Health and Reading in Elementary Schools

Background: Elementary classroom teachers must overcome a number of instructional barriers, including time constraints and professional preparation, if they are to deliver effective health education and enhance health literacy among youth. Purpose: This study examined the direct impact of a long-term professional development program on integrating health education and literacy instruction on third-grade teachers' confidence and practice and its indirect effect on student learning. Methods: Data on confidence and implementation of instructional and assessment practices were collected from 16 teachers. Students (n=99) from their classrooms and from four comparison classrooms (n=101) completed pre- and post-program constructed response assessment. Results: Significant increases were seen in teachers' confidence in describing health education standards, determining if students achieved the standards and using rubrics to guide scoring practices. Children's books were used to integrate instruction and most teachers increased the time spent on integration activities. Students in their classrooms scored significantly higher than students in comparison classrooms on health knowledge and skills. Discussion: These results confirm our belief that by increasing awareness and understanding of standards-based health education and assessment, and by showing teachers how they can use children's books as the context for teaching and reinforcing health concepts and skills outlined in the standards, their confidence about teaching health can increase. Translation to Health Education Practice: Integrating health and language arts instruction may be the key to overcoming some of the factors teachers report as barriers to teaching health education.

The effects of different approaches to reading instruction on letter detection tasks in normally achieving and low achieving readers

The present study used two letter detection tasks, the classic missing letter effect paradigm and a single word versus familiar word compound version of this paradigm, to study bottom-up and top–down processes involved in reading in normally achieving as compared to low achieving elementary school readers. The research participants were children in grades first to sixth who had been taught to read by three approaches to reading instruction (ARI): the whole language/global approach, the phonic/synthetic approach or the eclectic approach. Thus, the study attempted to clarify how different ARIs activate these processes in these two types of readers. The main hypothesis was that since low achieving readers rely on top–down processes for word recognition (see, e.g., Stanovich, 1980), the whole language ARI will reduce the difference in bottom-up tasks between them and the normally achieving readers. In the two experiments included in the study, participants were required to perform a letter detection task while reading short texts in Hebrew for comprehension. Contrary to this study hypotheses, the main finding was that the whole language ARI does not compensate for difficulties in bottom-up processes of low achieving readers. Moreover, the results of this study imply that any improvement in basic processes involved in reading proficiency produced by the whole language ARI for both the normal and the low achieving readers dissipates by grade three.

Universal Screening of Reading in Late Elementary School

Two curriculum-based measurement tools are commonly used to assess progress in reading in elementary school: R-CBM and CBM maze. R-CBM is used in practice more frequently than CBM maze is, although CBM maze is more time efficient to administer than R-CBM is. The technical adequacy of each of these measures has been reported in the literature; however, a comparative analysis of their technical adequacy has not been published. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the technical adequacy of R-CBM and CBM maze to inform their use in a universal screening program of reading in fourth and fifth grades. Results suggest evidence of short- and long-term alternate forms reliability, criterion validity, and predictive validity for both R-CBM and CBM maze, supporting the possibility that the two measures are comparable for use in universal screening at those grade levels.

‘Great chorus of protest’: a case study of conflict over the 1909 Eaton's readers

This article examines the controversy that ensued when the Education Department of the province of Ontario, Canada, granted the tender to publish elementary school readers to the T. Eaton Company, a department store, in 1909. This decision eliminated an important source of income for retail booksellers, who could not compete with the consumer appeal of a department store, or with its option of mail‐order service. Over the next decade, the booksellers fought vociferously, using a variety of strategies, in an effort to mitigate the effects of this decision on their profits. The booksellers' struggle was part of a larger campaign on the part of retailers to oppose mail‐order provision of consumer goods in Canada. This historical case study contributes to our understanding of the effects of political influences and commercial pressures on the provision of textbooks, which are central to instruction in a publicly funded school system.

‘Excellence is Never an Accident’

Brownsville, Texas, schools earn high marks for their focus on improving the English acquisition of their largely immigrant students. They use a web of instructional leadership and shared responsibility for every child. Excellence is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction, skillful execution, and the vision to see obstacles as opportunities. -- Brownsville motto Even among districts selected as finalists for the Broad Prize for Urban Education, the Brownsville Independent School District in Texas stands out. In 2008, the district received the Broad prize. Like all of the finalists, the district reflects the high poverty of its student population. Unlike others, Brownsville also serves a large population of English language learners, many of them new arrivals to this border town between Mexico and the United States. In reading and math at all grade levels, Brownsville outperformed other Texas districts serving students with similar income levels. In addition, Brownsville's Hispanic and low-income students outperformed their peers in similar districts in reading and math at all grade levels. Between 2004 and 2007, Brownsville's Hispanic students showed greater improvement than their peers in similar Texas districts in reading and math at all grade levels, according to the Broad prize methodology. Brownsville's low-income students also showed greater improvement than their peers in similar Texas districts in math at all grade levels and in elementary and high school reading. From 2004 to 2007, Brownsville surpassed the state average in raising the percentage of Hispanic and low-income students who achieved math proficiency at all grade levels and in elementary and high school reading proficiency. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Brownsville is also narrowing income and ethnic achievement gaps in reading and math at all grade levels. For example, between 2004 and 2007, Brownsville reduced the gap between Hispanic students and the state average for white students 12 percentage points in middle school math and reduced the gap between low-income students and Texas' non-low-income student average nine percentage points in high school reading. Three characteristics set Brownsville apart from other urban districts. MOVE ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS TO PROFICIENCY QUICKLY. The Brownsville Independent School District (BISD) serves one of the most underprivileged student populations in urban America, many of whom come to the district with limited, if any, English skills, especially among the elementary students. The programs and supports in place for English language learners (ELL) are unique to the local context. All elementary-level teachers in the district are dual certified in bilingual education. Districtwide, all teachers are trained in sheltered English instruction strategies. While the district offers optional transition and dual immersion in some schools, based on parent preference or student need, most students are placed in traditional classrooms where instruction is in English. Being successful is not a deep, dark secret. Using a range of research-based strategies and supplemental programs, the focus of instruction for young ELL students is to promote rapid gains in English proficiency. We push vocabulary; we push fluency in English, because we want them to be fluent in both languages, said one bilingual teacher. As a result of BISD's focused efforts, by the end of 3rd grade, almost 100% of students are proficient in English. Usually in the 4th grade, students are completely exiting [ELL programs], district administrators reported. The district also takes steps to ensure that ELL students who enter the district at the secondary levels do so in the most appropriate way. Through a partnership with the University of Texas at Austin, the district reviews transcripts for students entering from another country to ensure that students are being placed at the proper grade level and that they receive credit for courses taken elsewhere. …

Centennial Finds Juvenile Research Institute Thriving

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Community NewsFull AccessCentennial Finds Juvenile Research Institute ThrivingAaron LevinAaron LevinSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:2 Jan 2009https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.44.1.0008bHow do you connect the “Dick and Jane” elementary school readers and the Chicago Cubs to the history of child psychiatry research?The classic reading primers, familiar to a certain generation of once-young scholars, grew out of work done by Chicago's Institute for Juvenile Research, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, said Bennett Leventhal, M.D., director of the Institute's Center for Child Mental Health and Developmental Neuroscience. (We'll get to the Cubs in a minute.)Leventhal recapped the institute's history as he received the George Tarjan Award for Contributions in Developmental Disabilities at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Chicago last October.Founded as the Juvenile Psychopathic Institute, t he center grew out of a movement that saw delinquency not as a cause for punishment, but for the“ treatment, care, custody, and discipline of the neglected and dependent child.”Bennett Leventhal, M.D., addresses attendees at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry after being presented the George Tarjan Award for Contributions in Developmental Disabilities. He recounted the history of Chicago's 100-year-old Institute for Juvenile Research.Credit: Aaron LevinThe institute was housed first in Hull House, the settlement house (it would be called a community center today) founded by social reformer Jane Addams in Chicago in 1889. By the late 19th century, rapid industrialization and immigration had produced intense poverty, crime, and disease in Chicago. Child labor was uncontrolled, homeless children slept in the streets, and playgrounds were nonexistent. When children drifted into crime, they were sent to prisons with adults. The creation of juvenile courts changed some of that, but more was needed.The institute's first director, William Healy, M.D., began a five-year research program funded by private money, said Leventhal. His work resulted in a textbook on delinquency—one of the first of its kind—and a systematic method of evaluating a child's medical, social, and psychiatric history.In 1917 the institute was taken over by the state of Illinois and renamed the Institute for Juvenile Research. It established cooperative programs with freestanding child guidance clinics and schools in the city and around the state. Emphasis shifted from criminal to noncourt referrals over the same time.In the 1920s and 1930s, the organization began including a sociological dimension in its work. The Chicago Area Project concluded that crime and delinquency were not caused by ethnicity but by physical deterioration of the neighborhood and community disorganization. Geography mattered most. Even if the ethnicity of a neighborhood changed, delinquency was likely to continue there if the community remained disorganized and poor.The Behavior Research Fund was begun in 1926 and supported hundreds of publications on delinquency, child development, intelligence, and related subjects. Psychologist Marion Monroe's work on early childhood reading programs led to the Dick and Jane readers.The institute reflected the intellectual waves that drove psychiatry in general, adopting a psychoanalytic orientation in the 1940s and 1950s, followed by a more biological approach in subsequent years, said Leventhal. The state gave up control in 1990, and the institute became part of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois-Chicago. In 2008, 15,000 patients visited the institute, which trains psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers, and conducts $60 million of research.Leventhal did not limit his remarks to his own institution. The current site of the University of Illinois Medical School, to which the Institute for Juvenile Research belongs, was once the West Side Grounds, where the Chicago Cubs played before settling into the friendly confines of Wrigley Field.The Cubs, of course, haven't won a World Series since 1908, the very year the institute was founded. It's a record of failure that leaves fans feeling anxious during the season and depressed every October.Moreover, Leventhal swears, beyond the left-field wall of the old ballpark stood the state psychiatric hospital, a location that gave rise to the expression “out of left field,” conveying a source of the unexpected or irrational and providing another link between mental health and the Chicago Cubs. ▪ ISSUES NewArchived

Effects of Targeted Intervention on Early Literacy Skills of At-Risk Students

Reading problems are among the most prevalent concerns in schools; poor readers in elementary school who do not receive special assistance are particularly at risk for dismal academic careers. In a large-scale project, children with serious reading problems received targeted intervention to address critical early literacy skills. The assistance combined focused practice and frequent monitoring to provide instruction needed to improve reading skills. Participating students achieved significant gains in reading performance compared to a control group not receiving intervention. The outcomes of the study relate to continuing efforts to reduce the very large numbers of children failing to achieve early literacy skills in U.S. schools.

Evidence‐Based Strategies for Reading Instruction of Older Students with Learning Disabilities

Over a quarter of 8th‐grade students and more than one‐third of 4th graders do not read well enough to understand important concepts and acquire new knowledge from grade‐level text. For students with learning disabilities, the numbers are more troubling. This article describes features of evidence‐based instruction for students who continue to struggle with reading in late elementary, middle, and high school. Recommendations are organized into 5 areas that are critical to the reading improvement of older struggling readers: (1) word study, (2) fluency, (3) vocabulary, (4) comprehension, and (5) motivation. Much of the content in this article reflects our efforts with the Special Education and Reading Strands at the National Center on Instruction, funded by the Office of Special Education Programs and the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. Two reports, both available at http://www.centeroninstruction.org/, have particular relevance—Interventions for Adolescent Struggling Readers: A Meta‐Analysis with Implications for Practice and Academic Literacy Instruction for Adolescents: A Guidance Document from the Center on Instruction.

The Production of Meaning through Peer Interaction: Children and Walt Disney’s Cinderella

For many years researchers have understood that gender roles in children’s literature have the capacity to create and reinforce “meanings” of femininity and masculinity (Currie, Gend. Soc., 11: 453–477, 1997; Gledhill, Genre and gender: The case of soap opera. In S. Hall (Ed.), Representation (pp. 339–383). London: Sage, 1985; Tatar, Off with their heads!: Fairy tales and the culture of childhood. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993; Zipes, Happily ever after. New York: Routledge, 1997). The purpose of this study was to investigate children’s interpretation of a popular gendered fairy tale at the level of peer interaction. Walt Disney’s Cinderella was used in elementary school reading groups to investigate the ways that children understand messages regarding gender and the influence of peer culture on the production of meaning. The findings indicate that gender and gendered expectations were essential to the process of interpretation and the construction of meaning for the children. Gender unified the boys and girls into two distinct groups, particularly around the “girls’ book,” Cinderella. Gender was reinforced along traditional lines in the peer group, serving as a deterrent to the production of alternate interpretations to traditional messages in the text.

Screening for word reading and spelling problems in elementary school: An item response theory perspective

The purpose of the present study was to explore whether the Item Response Theory (IRT) provides a suitable framework to screen for word reading and spelling problems during the elementary school period. The following issues were addressed from an IRT perspective: (a) the dimensionality of word reading and spelling ability, (b) the development of word reading and spelling ability throughout the elementary grades, and (c) measurement precision and differential item functioning. Two computer-based tests were administered to measure word reading and spelling ability. In the word reading test, a progressive demasking technique was used to present isolated words. In the spelling test, children used the computer keyboard to spell words. The children’s spelling ability was also tested using a paper and pencil test. Analyses showed unidimensionality for the children’s word reading and spelling abilities in grades 2 to 6. The effect sizes also showed the growth in word reading and spelling abilities to be substantial. Furthermore, the informative value of both the word reading and the spelling ability scale was satisfactory for all of the elementary grades and the results did not indicate that the children score systematically higher or lower on the computer-based spelling test than on the paper-based spelling test. The present results open up possibilities to map progress in the reading and spelling process systematically and accurately.

Ten Big Effects of the No Child Left behind Act on Public Schools

TEST-DRIVEN accountability is now the norm in public schools, a result of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, which is the culmination of 15 years of standards-based reform. Many state and local officials believe that this reliance on tests is too narrow a measure of educational achievement, but NCLB has directed greater attention to low-achieving students and intensified efforts to improve persistently low-performing schools. For the past four years, the Center on Education Policy (CEP), an independent nonprofit research and advocacy organization, has been conducting a comprehensive and continuous review of NCLB, producing the annual reports contained in the series From the Capital to the Classroom as well as numerous papers on specific issues related to the law. (1) Each year, the CEP gathers information for this review by surveying officials in all the state departments of education, administering a questionnaire to a nationally representative sample of school districts, conducting case studies of individual school districts and schools, and generally monitoring the implementation of this important national policy. TEN EFFECTS Ten major effects of NCLB on American education are evident from this multi-year review and analysis. We describe these effects broadly, because our purpose is to assess the overall influence of this policy on public schools. The effects on particular schools and districts may be different. 1. State and district officials report that student achievement on state tests is rising, which is a cause for optimism. It's not clear, however, that students are really gaining as much as rising percentages of proficient scores would suggest. Scores on state tests in reading and mathematics that are used for NCLB purposes are going up, according to nearly three-fourths of the states and school districts, and the achievement gaps on these same tests are generally narrowing or staying the same. States and districts mostly credit their own policies as important in attaining these results, although they acknowledge that the adequate yearly progress (AYP) requirements of NCLB have also contributed. However, under NCLB, student achievement is equated with the proportion of students who are scoring at the proficient level on state tests, and states have adopted various approaches in their testing programs, such as the use of confidence intervals, that result in more test scores being counted as proficient. In addition, some national studies support our survey findings of increased student achievement, while others do not. 2. Schools are spending more time on reading and math, sometimes at the expense of subjects not tested. To find additional time for reading and math, the two subjects that are required to be tested under NCLB and that matter for accountability purposes, 71% of districts are reducing time spent on other subjects in elementary schools--at least to some degree. The subject most affected is social studies, while physical education is least affected. In addition, 60% of districts require a specific amount of time for reading in elementary schools. Ninety-seven percent of high-poverty districts have this requirement, compared to 55%-59% of districts with lower levels of poverty. 3. Schools are paying much more attention to the alignment of curriculum and instruction and are analyzing test score data much more closely. Changes in teaching and learning are occurring in schools that have not made AYP for two years. The most common improvements are greater alignment of curriculum and instruction with standards and assessments, more use of test data to modify instruction, use of research to inform decisions about improvement strategies, improvement in the quality and quantity of professional development for teachers, and the provision of more intensive instruction to low-achieving students. 4. Low-performing schools are undergoing makeovers rather than the most radical kinds of restructuring. …

Computer Usage and Reading in Elementary Schools: A Cross-Cultural Study

This study uses international data to investigate computer use situations in elementary school reading classes and the impacts of computer usage on students' reading performance across 15 countries. The study compares and reveals computer use levels in reading classes, frequencies of teachers having students use computers, times and places of students' computer usage, computer activities of male and female students, and effects of computer usage on students' reading interests and achievement by country. The results provide worldwide summary views of computer use in elementary school reading classes.