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Our students' voices matter; their stories are important. Digital tools can help students craft and publish their stories for wide, varied, authentic audiences. As little as a decade ago, it was difficult and expensive to publish digital stories. Given the myriad of apps and tools now available, teachers in elementary, middle, and high school settings can select the tools that will work best for their students. Digital storytelling can empower students and teachers to share their voices, participate in the ongoing, collective conversation, and learn from one another as they listen to and engage with others.

In 1986 Madeleine Will proposed the Regular Education Initiative (REI) to share possibilities for eliminating the divide between general and special education. Although great strides have been made over the past several decades in regard to the inclusion of students with disabilities, a significant divide between general and special education still exists. The purpose of this article is to discuss how multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) models for implementing evidence-based instruction to students with and without disabilities are used to create a culture of inclusive practices that encourage collaboration between general and special education. We offer suggestions for schools looking to establish and/or strengthen a model that is both cohesive and integrated.

We examined undergraduate students' perceptions of peers with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) before and after participating in an inclusive book club on the college campus. Over a six-week period, undergraduate students and students with I/DD enrolled in the post-secondary education program at the university engaged in an inclusive book club that involved coming together once a week for an hour to discuss a piece of literature. Results indicate that the perceptions of the undergraduate students changed as a result of their participation in the book club. Although, prior to the onset of the study, the undergraduates predicted that the students with I/DD would have difficulty with comprehension and participation, at the end of the study they reported that the students with I/DD did not have the difficulties they predicted and were able to successfully participate and contribute to discussions during each book club meeting. Implications of the findings for K-12 learning environments and post-secondary inclusive programs are provided.

Content area literacy has an important role in helping students understand content in specific disciplines, such as mathematics. Although the strategies are not unique to each individual content area, they are often adapted for use in a specific discipline. For example, mathematicians use mathematical language to make sense of new ideas and information and to organize that information in a specialized way. Content literacy strategies can help mathematics students accomplish these goals. In this article, we will discuss six practical strategies to help build students' content skills in the mathematics classroom and they are: the Frayer model, question generation, visual supports, think-alouds, writing to learn, and text reading.

Many educators across the country are implementing positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) in their schools and classrooms. While PBIS primarily focuses on proactive and preventative approaches to improve behavior, one of the essential elements of PBIS is the consistent use of consequences when students do not meet behavioral expectations. Most teachers view consequences as punitive reactions to misbehavior. However, there are ways to deliver consequences that are supportive in nature and result in positively redirecting students to engaging in desirable behavior, thereby eliminating the necessity of punitive responses. This column discusses the problems associated with commonly used punitive consequences to address challenging behaviors in classrooms and provides an alternative approach that is more in line with PBIS frameworks. This entails the use of a hierarchy of supportive consequences, which is explained in detail.

This study compared the reading gains of Kindergarten students who were at risk for reading failure who were taught with either a structured supplemental reading program or with teacher-designed or teacher-selected instruction. The authors used a quasi-experimental design with preexisting groups to examine changes from pretest to posttest. Although both programs were effective in producing statistically significant improvements in word attack and phonemic awareness skills, results revealed a pattern of moderate differences favoring a structured supplemental program called the Early Reading Tutor. Furthermore, anecdotal information from questionnaires suggested that participating tutors who used Early Reading Tutor would recommend it to others and considered it an effective yet simple program to implement.

This article addresses the effects of 3-tiered comprehensive reading and behavior interventions on K-3 student outcomes in 7 urban elementary schools with a high prevalence of students considered difficult to teach. Specific features of each level of the implementation are described including screening and tier placement procedures, scheduling and personnel supports, procedures for ensuring strong implementation with fidelity, procedures for student progress monitoring, and guidelines for instructional decision making. Early literacy skill outcomes for students were the primary dependent measures in reading; schoolwide office discipline referral rate was the dependent measure in behavior. Significant improvement was evident in phoneme segmentation and nonsense word fluency in reading and significant decreases were documented in office discipline referrals across treatment and comparison schools. Significantly higher outcomes were also recorded on required statewide end-of-grade assessments in treatment schools. Implications and caveats concerning effective implementation of the model in other settings are provided. The article emphasizes that changing schoolwide reading and behavior risk requires effective intervention, instruction, and support in both areas. (Contains 7 tables and 3 figures.)

Even evidence-based instructional methods may not be sufficient for closing achievement gaps. If teachers are not maximizing instructional time, achievement gaps are likely to widen over time; therefore, instruction need not only be effective but efficient as well. The purposes of this article are to (a) provide practitioners with a broad definition of instructional efficiency and (b) describe several considerations for increasing efficiency in the classroom. Suggestions are made for planning, delivering, and evaluating instruction. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

The existence of elementary reading specialists in schools has increased, and their role in improving schoolwide efforts for prevention and intervention of reading risk has received increased emphasis. The purpose of this article is to describe the components of a multitier schoolwide reading model in the early grades in which the reading specialist serves an essential leader. Recommendations are made for the role of the reading specialist in establishing and maintaining a model that is cohesive and integrated. In addition, the need for strong support from the principal is discussed, as well as specific roles the principal needs to play to ensure success.

Substantial research supports the need for early intervention efforts for students at risk for failure. Despite the empirically documented importance of early, explicit reading intervention for students who enter school without critical prereading skills, many kindergarten programs delay intensive reading instruction until later in the year. Instead, during the 1st months or semester of kindergarten the emphasis is on teaching readiness skills. The authors compared the progress of kindergarten students who received small-group reading intervention across the full school year with those who began the same intervention midyear. Students with a full year of intervention outperformed those who had only a half year of intervention. Because of the concerns about starting a structured and intensive intervention for students who are transitioning to kindergarten, the authors offer suggestions for helping to address some important readiness skills while providing early reading intervention. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)

Schools face many decisions on how to maximize instructional time and provide support for students who are at risk for failure in reading. Instructional grouping plays an important role. The authors used a true group experimental design to compare 2 grouping conditions--1:1 (1 tutor to 1 student) and 1:3 (1 tutor to 3 students)--on the reading achievement of 1st-grade students who were identified as at risk and the efficiency of delivering instruction. The results indicate that students made comparable progress and gains in reading when instructed in small groups of 3. Because the 1:3 condition uses resources more efficiently, it may be preferable to the 1:1. (Contains 5 tables and 2 figures.)

Vacations may have detrimental effects on maths and spelling performance, but the findings for reading are less conclusive. The purpose of this study was to analyse the effects of summer vacation on early literacy skills of young children. Participants included rising first and second-graders, most of whom were at-risk, struggling readers. No evidence of summer setback was evident for this sample of children; in fact, gains in reading (or, recoupment of any losses) were more common in children performing at lower levels than for those with higher scores at the end of the school year. Our outcomes are different from those reported by other researchers. We explain this with attention to the content of our comparisons, the grade levels investigated and measures used to assess performance, and discuss implications for future research based on our findings.

A multiple-baseline across participants was used to analyze the effects of adding multisensory elements to an explicit, systematic phonics program on the reading achievement of six students identified as treatment resisters. Participants were given 10 minutes of daily instruction in the supplemental program in addition to instruction in the evidence-based school-wide curriculum. The multisensory additions included finger tapping, letter formation onto carpet squares, and the use of magnetic letters. Fluency of nonsense word reading was used as the dependent variable and fluency of sound recognition within nonsense words was used as a collateral measure. Generalization of the decoding skills was assessed through oral reading fluency on first-grade and grade-level passages. (Contains 1 table and 8 figures.)

To promote student success, both in school and beyond, teachers must not only address academic skill development but also help their students become self-determined individuals. The importance of self-determination is implicit in special education legislation. Findings from postschool outcome studies also support the inclusion of self-determination instruction for students with disabilities: Students who have high levels of self-determination achieve greater success after they exit high school. Additionally, students with disabilities who have strong academic skills are more successful upon leaving high school. Therefore, both these areas are important for teachers to address. Teachers need to find the most efficient ways of delivering instruction in these crucial skill areas. Using children's literature to teach a broad range of skills to students with disabilities is one way to address this issue. This article provides teachers with several strategies they can use to promote both self-determination and literacy skills through the use of children's and adolescent literature. Included are examples of activities, a list of recommended children's books, and suggestions for classroom accommodations. (Contains 2 tables.)

Response cards are designed to encourage active student engagement during instruction. In this article, the use of response cards is described, along with ways teachers can use the information to inform their work and considerations for implementation.

This article addresses the effects of 3-tiered comprehensive reading and behavior interventions on K-3 student outcomes in 7 urban elementary schools with a high prevalence of students considered difficult to teach. Specific features of each level of the implementation are described including screening and tier placement procedures, scheduling and personnel supports, procedures for ensuring strong implementation with fidelity, procedures for student progress monitoring, and guidelines for instructional decision making. Early literacy skill outcomes for students were the primary dependent measures in reading; schoolwide office discipline referral rate was the dependent measure in behavior. Significant improvement was evident in phoneme segmentation and nonsense word fluency in reading and significant decreases were documented in office discipline referrals across treatment and comparison schools. Significantly higher outcomes were also recorded on required statewide end-of-grade assessments in treatment schools. Implications and caveats concerning effective implementation of the model in other settings are provided. The article emphasizes that changing schoolwide reading and behavior risk requires effective intervention, instruction, and support in both areas., School administrators face daily and continuous challenges in efforts to establish and maintain safe and orderly classroom environments where teachers can teach and students can learn (Algozzine & Algozzine, 2009; [...]

Many educators are reluctant to use scripted instruction, reporting that scripts are mechanical in nature and only appropriate for low-level skills. This study sought to investigate the impact of a supplemental program’s script on the rate of on-task and off-task instructional opportunities offered by the instructor for students to practice the specific skills targeted in lesson exercises. Using a multiple-baseline across-participants design, four paraeducators delivered daily instruction, first in a nonscripted version of an explicit supplemental program and then in the scripted version of the same program, to 12 first-grade students identified at risk for reading failure. Upon introduction of the script, the rate of on-task instructional opportunities for student practice was substantially higher, and the rate of off-task instructional opportunities diminished. Both paraeducators and student participants preferred the scripted instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the use of children's literature for instilling a sense of self-determination as well as literary skills. The authors survey definitions of self-determination from relevant academic literature and posit that it is the ultimate goal of education. The authors discuss various issues, including the selecting of books, creating self-awareness among students with disabilities, encouraging problem solving and decision making skills, developing goal setting and self-management, and teaching self-advocacy skills. INSET: What Does the Research Say About Children's Literature?.