Reading in the content areas of science, social studies, and current events is a difficult task that is even more elusive to Spanish speaking English language learners. There is a huge increase in children transitioning from their L1 (e.g., Spanish) to L2 (e.g., English) in classrooms across the US. These ELs face challenges due to a lack of fluency in decoding, vocabulary, and word, sentence, and discourse level complexities in English learning. Structure strategy instruction on the Web for English Language Learners (SWELL) is a web-based tutoring system that supports ELs in reading comprehension by teaching them about five text structures. In addition SWELL provides two adaptations for ELs--Spanish Scaffolding (where students were presented materials in both Spanish and English) and English Hybrid (where students were given the option of seeking assistance in Spanish by hovering over words, clicking on sentences, or viewing a full page in Spanish). In this paper we report on the design and pilot studies conducted within five classrooms at grades 4,5, and 6. Our results show improvements in reading comprehension measured by researcher design measures. [For the complete proceedings, see ED557311.].

This book makes a contribution to a global conversation about the competencies, challenges, and changes being introduced as a result of digital technologies. This volume consists of four parts, with the first being elaborated from each of the featured panelists at CELDA (Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age) 2014. Part One is an introduction to the global conversation about competencies and challenges for 21st-century teachers and learners. Part Two discusses the changes in learning and instructional paradigms. Part Three is a discussion of assessments and analytics for teachers and decision makers. Lastly, Part Four analyzes the changing tools and learning environments teachers and learners must face. Each of the four parts has six chapters. In addition, the book opens with a paper by the keynote speaker aimed at the broad considerations to take into account with regard to instructional design and learning in the digital age. The volume closes with a reflective piece on the progress towards systemic and sustainable improvements in educational systems in the early part of the 21st century.

While current educational technologies have the potential to fundamentally enhance literacy education, many of these tools remain unknown to or unused by today’s practitioners due to a lack of access and support. Adaptive Educational Technologies for Literacy Instruction presents actionable information to educators, administrators, and researchers about available educational technologies that provide adaptive, personalized literacy instruction to students of all ages. These accessible, comprehensive chapters, written by leading researchers who have developed systems and strategies for classrooms, introduce effective technologies for reading comprehension and writing skills.

This scholarly research Handbook aggregates the broad-ranging, interdisciplinary, multidimensional strands of writing research from scholars worldwide and brings them together into a common intellectual space. This is the first such international compilation. Now in its second edition, the Handbook inaugurates a wide scope of international research advancement, with attention to writing at all levels of schooling and in all life situations. It provides advanced surveys of scholarship on the histories of world and child writing and literacy; interconnections between writing, reading, and speech; digital writing; writing in communities; writing in the sciences and engineering; writing instruction and assessment; and writing and disability. A section on international measures for assessment of writing is a new addition to this compendium of research. This Handbook serves as a comprehensive resource for scholars, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates in writing studies and rhetoric, composition, creative expression, education, and literacy studies.

A Co-publication of Routledge and the International Reading Association This new edition of Assessing Readers continues to bridge the gap between authentic, informal, and formative assessments, and more traditional quantitative, and summative assessment approaches. At the heart of the book is respect and confidence in the capabilities of knowledgeable teachers to make the correct literacy decisions for the students they teach based on appropriate assessments. Inclusive and practical, it supports individual classroom teachers' knowledge, beliefs, decisions, and roles and offers specific assessment, instruction, and organizational ideas and strategies, while incorporating a range of perspectives that inform the field of reading and literacy education, covering the most important ideas and information found in more traditional reading diagnosis books. Changes in the Second Edition Addresses the Common Core State Standards Includes Response to Intervention (RTI) Discusses family literacy in language-diverse homes and the needs of ELL students Covers formative assessment Offers ideas and guidelines for ELL assessment Looks at issues of accountability and teaching to prescribed state tests and objectives versus accommodating to them – the pitfalls and problems and how to cope Provides new practical examples, including new rubrics, more teacher-developed cognitive assessments, a new case study, and new teacher-developed strategy lessons