The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant repercussions on students’ academic performance. Notably, there has been a decline in students’ reading proficiency. Consequently, efforts to address these learning gaps, particularly among at-risk students, have proliferated. A recent quasi-experimental study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of the Achieve3000 program and its impact on students’ achievements, as well as potential influencing factors. Achieve3000 is a computer-based literacy program that integrates online delivery, teacher-guided instruction, and at-home study options. Its primary objective is to facilitate the growth of fluency, vocabulary, writing skills, reading comprehension, phonics, and phonemic awareness among pre-K-12 students. The program offers nonfiction reading materials that can be shared by teachers with the entire class, while the software generates customized assignments based on each student’s reading level. Achieve3000 also provides three different options based on students’ grade levels (preK-2, 3-5, 6-8) and three options based on their language proficiency (English Language Learners,...

A small-scale cluster-randomized controlled trial investigated the effects of the Triple Q writing intervention on middle school students’ argumentative writing skills. Triple Q is a text-based argument writing intervention targeted at honing middle school students’ ability to discuss why they feel a certain way about an issue, and to present evidence supporting their viewpoint in an essay that is well-written, clear, and organized. It is comprised of 3 units of 15 lessons, 30 minutes a lesson, with each unit using two texts addressing issues of potential controversy that relate to students’ lives. It incorporates class discussion about the content of a text’s argument, analyzing the argument-related features authors used in the text, and the language choices authors used to further their stands. Students then take a stand and draft an essay, get feedback, and then revise their essays. Subjects were 494 students (n=220E, 274C) in 27 sixth and seventh-grade classrooms...

In the context of current educational challenges, the state of reading in middle schools remains a critical concern. Many students at this level struggle with reading proficiency, leading to significant learning gaps and hindering their academic progress. The inability to comprehend and engage with complex texts not only affects their performance in language arts but also hampers their learning in other subjects. A study published in the Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk presents findings from a one-year evaluation of Readable English. This intervention aims to improve middle school students’ reading skills by providing explicit instruction in linguistics components and comprehension strategies. The evaluation, conducted by Joanne Coggins at Middle Tennessee State University, involved four schools, seventeen teachers, and 344 MTSS/RTI Tiers-2 and -3 and Special Education students in grades 6-8 from three neighboring rural districts in Indiana. Eligible students from one of the districts were randomly assigned...

Future Forward, formerly known as SPARK, is a program that received an Investing in Innovations grant to develop and assess its impact in seven Milwaukee Public Schools serving primarily Black and Latinx students. This program uses a school-family-community partnership approach to address the literacy needs of struggling readers and their families. A previous randomized study suggested two years of participation in the program had positive effects on reading achievement, school attendance, and foundational literacy. Jones and colleagues conducted a follow-up study to evaluate whether the benefits were sustained five years after participation ended. This study assessed student data on attendance, achievement, and demographics within five years after the end of the program, from the spring of 2015 to the winter of 2020. Results showed that students who received Future Forward continued to improve in reading achievement and school attendance, and were much less likely to be placed into special education...

Reading comprehension is an essential skill; hence, it is crucial to identify effective strategies to support children in developing this skill, particularly when they face challenges in reading. In a recent Bayesian network meta-analysis (BNMA), researchers examined the effectiveness of various combinations of text comprehension strategies in interventions for students with reading difficulties across grades 3 to 12. The meta-analysis included 52 studies and focused on commonly used strategies including main idea, text structure, retell, self-monitoring, graphic organizers, inference, and prediction. Among the 35 possible combinations of strategies examined, the meta-analysis found the main idea-text structure-retell combination to be the most effective in improving reading comprehension (Standard Mean Difference = 1.72). Close behind was the main idea-text structure-self monitoring-graphic organizers combination (SMD = 1.13), followed by the main idea strategy alone (SMD = 1.07). These combinations and individual strategies showed a significant positive impact on enhancing reading comprehension skills. On...

A recent publication in Language Teaching Research compared the effect of a gamified collaborative intervention to non-gamified collaborative learning on students’ English reading outcomes and motivation. The participants were two classes of junior secondary students at a school in northern China. One class (N=52) was assigned to the experiment group receiving gamified instruction, while another class (N=52), the control group, received non-gamified instruction. All students were native speakers of Chinese learning English as a foreign language. Both groups received their assigned program on learning word meaning through morphological analysis for a total of ten 55-minute sessions from the same instructor with the same materials, but only the experimental group was exposed to physical game elements.  Although both gamification and game-based learning share game-design elements, they differ in nature. Game-based learning involves the design of complete games, while gamification only employs game-design elements to make learning more game-like. In this research,...

“Raffi and his Friends” is a peer-assisted strategy delivered as a whole-class program that consists of 20 structured lessons in which the instructors use the strategies of clarifying, questioning, and predicting to support student reading comprehension. Student dyads are created by matching students with high and low reading skills in order to allow them to work in heterogeneous groups. A recent evaluation published in Contemporary Educational Psychology assessed the effectiveness of this program in third grade in Germany. The study matched 11 classes (187 students) in the experimental group with 10 classes (177 students) in the control group. The study used independent measures of fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension to assess the effectiveness of the program. The intervention was delivered by research assistants supervised by the development team, thus results could differ in the program implementation with regular teachers. The results showed a significant improvement in the reading measures administered...

The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) (2019) indicates that 65% of fourth graders in the U.S. do not show proficiency in reading. Given that reading skills in kindergarten and first grade have been demonstrated by many studies to be critical to students’ academic success and societal achievements, there is an urgent demand for interventions that effectively facilitate young children’s acquisition of reading skills. Recently, a study was conducted to examine the effect of a one-on-one high-dosage tutoring program, Chapter One, on kindergarten and first grade learners. Chapter One provides students who struggle to read with paraprofessional tutors who help them develop their literacy skills via digital applications. This study involved 185 kindergarten and first grade students in an Ohio Title 1 school, who were randomly assigned to the treatment group, who received both teacher instruction and Chapter One tutoring 2-3 times per week during school days, or the...

Language abilities in the early years have a long-lasting influence on children’s learning in school and later life. However, a considerable number of children enter school with weak language skills. Because e-books are increasingly considered an effective tool to narrow the gap, a meta-analysis published in the Educational Research Review investigated the effects of e-books on language support in early childhood education and care (ECEC). The meta-analysis evaluated the effectiveness of e-book reading in ECEC on children’s language development in comparison to two conditions: regular childcare without e-books, and print book reading in classrooms. After reviewing the studies published between 2000 and 2018 in English or German, the review identified 17 studies that met the inclusion criteria, such as involving at least 10 children, consisting of typically-developing and at-risk children (excluding children with developmental disorders), and using the society-spoken language (excluding a foreign language). Results indicated that e-book reading in...