The purpose of this study was to rate oral retellings of fifth graders to determine how passages, raters, and rating occasions affect those ratings, and to identify what combination of those elements produce reliable retelling ratings. A group of 36 fifth grade students read and orally retold three contemporary realistic fiction passages. Two…

This study examined the effectiveness of a series of workshops and at-home activities designed to teach parents to integrate comprehension strategy instruction into read-alouds with their pre-kindergarten-aged children. Twenty parent-child dyads were randomly assigned to condition and parents in the experimental (workshop) condition were taught to…

In this article the author shares examples of reading conferences with 10 English learners over the course of a semester. The reading conferences are conducted by four monolingual, European-American teachers at a primary school in the Southeastern United States. Sociocultural and identity theories are used as a theoretical frame for the research…

During a 10-week classroom-based study, 20 fourth grade students participated in a number of interdependent activities that focused on developing their visual meaning-making skills and competencies. As well as reading, responding in writing to and discussing a selection of picturebooks, graphic novels, and magazines, the students created graphic…

In this study, we tracked elementary preservice teachers' (N = 41) perceived ability to teach reading as they moved through their teacher preparation program. After graduation, we conducted follow-up teaching observations and interviews with five of these novice teachers to explore their perceptions about their ability to teach reading. An…

Utilizing a formative experiment, this study investigated how a nonfiction-focused writing workshop could be implemented to improve students' reading and writing. Eighteen students from a fourth grade class at a rural school in a large southeastern school district participated in the study. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected prior to…

This article reports an empirical study conducted in a Taiwanese English as a second language university class. Reader response theory is the theoretical framework guiding the study. Fifty-nine university students were encouraged to collaboratively create multimodal responses to a classic English reading. Taking an aesthetic reading stance, the…

This mixed methods study examined preservice teachers' growth in content knowledge and self-efficacy for teaching reading as they participated in a literacy course/reading clinic practicum with those not enrolled in the experience. Groups were compared on three measures using a pretest-posttest design. Additionally, five preservice teachers from…

This study's purpose was to determine whether or not the Literacy Coach Appraisal Instrument developed for use in evaluating literacy coaches had content validity. The study, a fully mixed concurrent equal status design conducted from a pragmatist philosophy, collected qualitative and quantitative data from literacy experts about the elements of…

Five qualitative multiple-case studies document adolescents' uses of Web-based resources and digital literacy skills to construct their online identities. Working from a perspective that integrates new literacies with multimodality, the researchers enlisted the help of five high school students who kept daily logs of the websites they visited for…

As institutions offer more online courses in their teacher certification and literacy master's programs, research is needed to address issues of quality assurance in online instruction. This multicase study analyzes qualitatively elements for addressing quality assurance of the implementation of an online content literacy teacher education course…

Secondary preservice teachers (N = 67) in a required content area literacy course and 30-hour field experience presented tradebooks, biographies, as well as pre, during, and after reading lessons based on topics in their content area to middle and high school students. At the end of the semester, they were asked to complete an anonymous survey.…

This article reports on the use of a text-based verbal protocol (Afflerbach, 2000) situated within individual interviews to elicit secondary English teachers' perspectives on new literacies (Albers & Harste, 2007; Coiro, Knobel, Lankshear, & Leu, 2008). Ranging significantly in their teaching experience and comfort with new media and digital…

This article uses a review of research to consider a fundamental aspect of reading instruction that has been marginalized in policies and practices over the last decade: the development of silent reading habits that involve strong comprehension and optimal reading rates. The review of research attends to typical development and performances of…

This article presents 34 characteristics of texts and tasks ("text features") that can make continuous (prose), noncontinuous (document), and quantitative texts easier or more difficult for adolescents and adults to comprehend and use. The text features were identified by examining the assessment tasks and associated texts in the national…