Search results

Purpose – To provide educators with a new paradigm for teaching struggling readers that reaches, teaches, and increases comprehension based on authentic, accelerated/enriched, integrated instruction supported by brain research.Design/methodology/approach – The chapter highlights multiple specific steps based on extensive research that educators can take to increase reading achievement for struggling readersFindings – The instructional approach and methods identified in the chapter have demonstrated success in increasing reading achievement for struggling readers and prepares them to be successful readers in the 21st century.Research limitations/implications – The chapter focuses on a great body of research that supports the paradigm shift developed in the chapter which has been used to develop effective instruction with demonstrated results.Practical implications – This chapter presents a framework for rethinking traditional approaches for teaching struggling readers and provides a comprehensive approach for teacher educators, reading specialists, and classroom teachers to transform by using a new paradigm that leads to success.Originality/value of chapter – Originality centers on a new paradigm. Value centers on the impact this new paradigm will make on increasing motivation, engagement, and comprehension of struggling readers.

Purpose – To introduce classroom teachers to an integrated digital literacies perspective and provide a range of strategies and tools to support struggling readers in becoming successful digital readers and multimodal composers.Design/methodology/approach – The chapter begins with the rationale for integrating technology to support struggling readers’ achievement, explains universal design for learning principles, and then offers specific strategies, digital tools, and media for reading and composing.Findings – Provides research support for the use of technology to provide students’ access to grade-level text, enhance comprehension, improve writing, and develop multimodal composition skills.Research limitations/implications – The authors do not address all areas of technology and literacy integration. Instead, they focus on key priority areas for using technology to develop struggling readers’ literacy.Practical implications – The chapter provides theoretical and research-based strategies and digital resources for using technology to improve struggling readers’ comprehension and composition that should be helpful to classroom teachers.Originality/value of chapter – Teachers need support in integrating technology and literacy in ways that will make a meaningful difference for their struggling readers’ achievement and engagement.

This chapter reviews the historical tension between global and local interests in library classifications. More specifically, this chapter presents the concept and characteristics of the reader-interest classifications as they were reported in the literature of the past century, including its alleged advantages and detected shortcomings, in order to discuss their presence and consequences in current cases of reader-interest classifications such as BISAC. Following an implicit post-structuralist approach, issues such as the role of standardization and centralization in these projects, the focus and philosophy underlying the construction of these classifications, and the underlying global interests of the book industry are analyzed in order to determine the social consequences and viability of these local classifications. It is concluded that libraries that consider adopting a reader-interesting classification must really think of the interest of the users (in plural) and not only of the global book industry that dominates the development of the standards.

Purpose – To describe four instructional components teachers can use to help create more inclusive spaces for struggling readers: (a) language use, (b) repositioning struggling readers as primary knowers, (c) making struggling normal, and (d) creating reading partnerships.Design/methodology/approach – The chapter describes research findings from studies of middle grades students in English language arts, and theorizes work with struggling readers on the basis of identity theories, research about identifying and utilizing students’ own funds of knowledge, and research about the conditions for building reading self-efficacy, motivation, and engagement.Findings – Provides detailed descriptions of how teachers’ language use, reading partnerships, making struggling a normal part of reading processes, and helping struggling readers become full participants in classroom life, including models, examples, and interview data with middle grades struggling readers.Research limitations/implications – Adjusting teachers’ language use in discussions of how to read, using students’ knowledge of reading and other topics from outside of school, enabling collaboration through peer reading partnerships, and positioning all students to understand that struggling with reading is normal and not necessarily a sign of low ability.Practical implications – This is a valuable source for classroom teachers who are seeking successful strategies for engaging and supporting struggling readers while also creating a positive classroom environment for reading instruction in general.Originality/value of chapter – The environment a reading teacher creates, including the language that teacher uses, can have a powerful and positive impact on struggling readers’ classroom identities, self-efficacy, motivation, and ability to engage successfully with reading processes in school.

Purpose – To identify effective literacy instructional strategies and methods based on assessment. Also, to provide information on literacy experts that teachers may seek advice from as they work with striving readers.

Approach – A review of literature and the research on teaching striving readers were examined.

Practical implications – Reading is an important determining factor in efficacious learning and overall literacy; students must possess the necessary literacy skills to become successful and productive citizens in an information age. Throughout the chapter, a striving reader is presented while offering the reader an authentic example of a striving reader. The strategies, methods, and experts offer best practices; these will enhance the student(s) literacy skills.

Originality/value of paper – Educators utilizing the information provided in this chapter will be enhanced in their ability to effectively teach their students.

In response to the urgent national need to implement evidence-based literacy supports for adolescent struggling readers (ASRs), this chapter provides a framework for addressing reading comprehension instruction. Schools face significant challenges in the education of ASRs including how to address the achievement gap that emerges between proficient readers and a variety of poor reader subgroups predicted by the Simple View of Reading. The authors present current research in the components of reading comprehension (e.g., text structures, vocabulary, prior knowledge, cognitive strategies, and motivation) and explicit pedagogical practices associated with improving outcomes for ASRs, including a school-wide framework called the Content Literacy Continuum. Two specific interventions with supporting research are presented as model practices to improve outcomes for ASRs.

This chapter reviews some of our most recent research as to whether the cognitive performance of reading disabled and poor readers can be separated under dynamic assessment procedures. We describe results related to junior high school students (mean chronological age of 12 years) with reading disabilities, poor readers, and skilled readers. Students were administered intelligence, reading and math tests, and working memory (WM) measures (presented under static and dynamic testing conditions). The results thus far show that: (1) dynamic assessment measures (maintenance scores) contributed unique variance to predicting reading; and (2) poor readers and skilled readers were more likely to change and maintain gains under the dynamic testing conditions than students with reading disabilities. Some discussion was given to developing a valid classification of reading disabilities.

To examine the utility of multiple reading speeds during rereadings toward enhancing comprehension and application of subsequently gained knowledge.

Representations of slow, mindful reading as well as analyses of eye training and speed reading techniques are described to serve as the theoretical foundation for the meta-strategy – read fast, read slow (RF/RS).

This meta-strategy encompasses aspects of rereading, eye training exercises, and speed reading; it is derived from a cognitive concept that a blueprint can be formed from reading at an increased speed from one’s normal speed. Further, the gaps along with that information which was not fully understood from the initial reading can be secured by following the initial fast read with a slower than normal reading of the text. The idea is to refine that which is important versus unimportant (main idea vs. details), and enhance the surface level of understanding into one that is critical and analytical after having been confronted against existing schematic notions.

Concepts of text structure, word reading automaticity, and content interest are natural by-products of using the RF/RS strategy. Together, these benefits allow for holistic growth and moreover, provide successful reading experiences. Successful reading prompts additional reading, as it has been widely established that better readers read more often and more widely.