This study examines three questions: What kinds of think-aloud statements, in particular what kinds of inferences, are made by middle school students while reading expository text? Does thinking aloud affect comprehension as measured by recall and answers to questions? Does thinking aloud add value to the assessment of comprehension beyond what is…

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…

There are hundreds of tutoring programs that utilize community volunteers being implemented across the country; however, there are few rigorous efforts to evaluate their effectiveness. This article presents findings on reading achievement from an evaluation of the New York City Experience Corps[R], a program that uses older volunteers to work with…

This article reports research that examines the impact of fidelity to a scripted program in two third-grade classrooms. The data was drawn from a study conducted in an elementary school functioning under pressure from state and district policy to increase student standardized reading test scores. Thematic analysis was used to analyze observation…

This study examines 42 early childhood preservice teachers' experiences in a writing methods course. Findings indicated that preservice teachers began the class with a strong sense of themselves as writers along the good-bad writing dichotomy. Throughout their experiences in a writing methods course the preservice teachers identified four…

The classroom-based research discussed in this article focuses on how elementary students' experiences with a collection of postmodern picturebooks developed their narrative competence. This article explores how 39 Grades 3 and 4 students' written and visual texts were affected by reading a particular selection of picturebooks. The students wrote…

The purpose of the present study was to investigate students' perceptions of their experiences with literature circles across elementary grades. A stratified random sample of 24 diverse students in grades one, three, four, and five were individually interviewed to obtain perceptions of their attitudes toward literature circles and their…

The purpose of this article is to examine whether there were improvements in the percentage of first-, second-, and third-grade students in Reading First (RF) schools in Michigan who performed at or above grade level on a standardized test of reading comprehension. The study reports results for 140 schools that participated in the RF initiative…

Five years of reading comprehension data in Florida Reading First schools were analyzed to address questions regarding student improvement, reduction in the achievement gap, efficacy of site visits to schools making no achievement gains, and effects of student mobility on growth in reading comprehension. Participants were 120,000 students (about…

This article reports on the student achievement outcomes for third graders in Reading First (RF) schools in Pennsylvania over the five years of implementation for the group as a whole, for disaggregated groups of third graders, and for third graders who received reading instruction in RF schools for one, two, and three years. We also present a…

In this article, the author reports on what he found impressive in the evaluation results of the program Reading First (RF) in four states: Utah, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida. The author states that responding to these four exemplary state-level studies of Reading First evoked mixed feelings. He noticed three things: (1) the RF effect…

This article provides a summary of the five years of implementation of the first cohort of schools participating in Utah's Reading First Initiative. Fifteen schools across six districts comprised this cohort. Performance is compared to the performance of a cohort of matched comparison schools as well as the average state performance on the Utah…

The author begins her comments on "Reviewing Adolescent Literacy Reports: Key Components and Critical Questions" by commending the authors for taking on this rather massive project. The project required not only locating and reading the many lengthy reports that exist on adolescent literacy but also sifting through the numerous claims, ideas, and…

The effect of three approaches to revision instruction on 61 college students' revision behavior and writing quality was investigated for this article. Students wrote three 5-page papers and received one of three instructional approaches: Formal Peer Review (n = 19), Formal Self-Review (n = 20), or No Formal Review (n = 22). Formal Peer Review…

This study reports on an examination of the factor structure underlying reading performance in a sample of urban, dysfluent children. Participants were 140 second and third graders identified as exhibiting reading difficulties stemming from inefficient word and/or nonword reading. Consistent with a more complex view of reading, the results of…