The high stakes consequences resulting from an emphasis on standardized test scores can be detrimental to adolescent readers' perceptions of themselves as readers. A single measure of reading ability provides only a small picture of what students can accomplish and what their learning needs are. This case study provides a keen insight into…

Over a 12-week period, the researchers implemented explicit and systematic reading instruction using grade-level fiction to evaluate the effects on the oral reading fluency and comprehension of seventh and eighth grade urban students at risk of academic failure. Ten students in the experimental group were provided systematic instruction consisting…

The research base on how to effectively intervene to improve the reading fluency of students with academic and behavioral disabilities at the middle school level does not provide a strong support for evidence- based practices with this age group. The purpose of this study was to extend the body of research on reading fluency interventions to…

Balanced literacy has been proposed as a compromise or middle ground between philosophical approaches to reading instruction that stress teaching of word recognition and those that stress construction of meaning. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the READ 180 balanced literacy supplementary instruction program on…

The purpose of this study was to determine the efficacy of systematic explicit instruction of a questioning strategy for improving the text comprehension of middle school students. Specifically, the reading comprehension of six 8th grade students was investigated to determine whether the questioning strategy, QtA, lead to an increase in the…

In this essay I pose questions to literacy teacher educators and classroom teachers to inspire them to review their epistemological beliefs about teaching, learning, and knowledge. I also provide some history of transdisciplinarity, and introduce readers to "Miss Smith", a composite of five middle school teachers who hold a transdisciplinary…

This research study's purpose or theme was to qualitatively investigate the reading component of a private after-school tutoring program that offered academic assistance to eighth-grade students. The problem with reading is many urban middle school students have poor reading skills and do not perform well on reading standardized tests. Relative to…

This research explores struggling adolescent readers' perceptions about reading. The eight students featured in this study were enrolled in a mandatory Title I remedial reading class. The purpose of the Title I intervention class was to prepare these middle school eighth graders to successfully pass the state's criterion referenced test. The…

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether relations existed between sixth, seventh, and eighth grade learners' and their teachers' efficacy beliefs and outcome expectancies and whether student perceived efficacy beliefs were predictors of reading comprehension achievement as measured by a reading comprehension subtest score on a state…

Ineffective approaches for teaching with print may prevent textbook reading from being a useful learning resource in middle school. University faculty mentored a middle school science teacher as he implemented a textbook study-reading approach, PLAN (Caverly, Mandeville & Nicholson, 1995), in 2 classes (n=33). PLAN orchestrates 4 strategies…