A randomized control trial compared the effects of two kinds of vocabulary instruction on component reading skills of adult struggling readers. Participants seeking alternative high school diplomas received 8 h of scripted tutoring to learn forty academic vocabulary words embedded within a civics curriculum. They were matched for language…

The achievement gaps between poor and more affluent students are persistent and chronic, as many students living in poverty are also members of more isolated communities where dialects such as African American English and Southern Vernacular English are often spoken. Non-mainstream dialect use is associated with weaker literacy achievement. The…

The goal of the present intervention research was to test whether guided invented spelling would facilitate entry into reading for at-risk kindergarten children. The 56 participating children had poor phoneme awareness, and as such, were at risk of having difficulty acquiring reading skills. Children were randomly assigned to one of three training…

To date, there have been few causally interpretable evaluations of the impacts of preschool curricula on the skills of children at-risk for academic difficulties, and even fewer studies have demonstrated statistically significant or educationally meaningful effects. In this cluster-randomized study, we evaluated the impacts of a literacy-focused…

The purpose of this study was (1) to examine the causal effects of READ 180, a mixed-methods literacy intervention, on measures of word reading efficiency, reading comprehension and vocabulary, and oral reading fluency and (2) to examine whether print exposure among children in the experimental condition explained variance in posttest reading…

The purposes of this study were to replicate previous research on phonics-based tutoring in kindergarten and to compare treatment effects for students who received individual instruction compared to instruction in dyads. Thirty classroom teachers from 13 urban elementary schools referred at-risk students for participation. Students who met…

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of revising goals focused on content and audience awareness on the persuasive writing of fifth- and eighth-grade students. Students were randomly assigned to three different goal conditions: a general goal; a goal to improve content; and a goal to improve content and communication with an…

Examines the utility of teaching reading using rime-based reading strategies with prereaders. Measures rhyming, phoneme identity, letter-sound knowledge, phonological working memory, First Nations language speaking ability, and reading. Concludes that progress in phonological awareness and word reading can be enhanced in prereaders by adding…