Research: Teachers and Children's Reading Success

Question: What is a rarely recognized cause of children’s success in reading?

Source: James-Burdumy, S., Deke, J., Lugo-Gil, J., Carey, N., Hershey, A., Gersten, R., Newman-Gonchar,R., Dimino, J., Haymond, K., & Faddis, B. (2010). Effectiveness of selected supplemental reading comprehension interventions: Findings from two student cohorts (NCEE 2010-4015). Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved July 5, 2010 from http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20104015/pdf/20104015.pdf

Answer: “Finds that the impact of one of the curricula (ReadAbout)was statistically significantly larger after teachers had one year of experience using the curricula.”

Comment: I learned long ago that “canned” programs required some in-service training for successful implementation. The teachers did not read carefully the instructions for implementing the program the way it was intended and, as a result, problems developed with not only the students’ attitude toward the program but with parents’ perceptions of the program. In this case, gaining experience with the program by using it for one year resulted in significant success. RayS.

Title: “Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English.” Richard Beach et al. Research in the Teaching of English (November 2010), Internet. Note: The editors of RTE said that so much research was available they did not want to burden the paper edition of the journal with it, so they relegated their annotated reports on research to the Internet.