Welcome to the Reading Research Recap!

I am Dr. Neena Saha, Research Advisor at MetaMetrics. My focus is bridging the research-practice gap so that you can access useful resources that support reading success, expand awareness of the latest reading research, and inform your teaching and learning strategies. This monthly compendium offers the most relevant and must-read research impacting the reading and learning landscape, including easy-to-view, digestible highlights. We want the data and findings to be as useful to you as possible, so please do connect with me with any ideas and comments for next month. Enjoy the latest Reading Research Recap!

Deep Dive: Self-Regulation, Student Engagement, and Reading Comprehension

Hi everyone!

Mental health and self-regulation is so important, especially for younger students. Disruptive behaviors can interfere with learning academic skills. Teachers need brief, effective (easily trained) interventions to help students increase engagement, respectful behaviors, and academic skills. That is why I chose this paper: The Effects of a Tier 1 Self-Regulation Intervention on Elementary Students’ Engagement and Reading Comprehension.

Sample

Emotional exhaustion is defined as “…feelings of emotional overstrain and reduced emotional resources.” It is a core dimension of teacher burnout

• The study included five students from a Midwestern, urban Catholic school with 150 PK-8th grade students
• The study took place during a 6-week summer school program
• 95% of students identified as Hispanic, and 100% qualified for free and reduced-price lunch
• Teachers used the Student Risk Screening Scale to identify students who might be at behavioral and emotional risk

Design

The researchers employed a single case A-B-A-B-A-B withdrawal design, alternating between baseline weeks (when students received only reading lessons) and intervention weeks (when students received the 5-minute self-regulation intervention before reading lessons) to evaluate the effects of the intervention on student engagement and reading comprehension.RetryClaude can make mistakes. Please double-check responses.

Intervention

Teachers implemented the brief intervention immediately before reading lessons during treatment weeks, and it included:

• three rounds of deep breathing, 
• identifying three things they hear, 
• defining two emotions they feel, 
• making one self-compliment, 
• and ending with three more rounds of deep breathing

Results

• On intervention weeks, students showed increased academic engagement, and respectful behavior, and decreased disruptive behavior 
• Reading comprehension scores were also higher during intervention weeks
• Teachers implemented the intervention with 100% fidelity
• Teachers rated the intervention as highly acceptable

Limitations

• Small sample size and limited duration (6-week summer program)
• Results may not reflect typical school-year conditions
• Limited number of teacher participants affected the generalizability
• Unclear whether improvements resulted from the intervention, daily reading lessons, or both

Take-home message

“This study offers a Tier 1 Self-Regulation Intervention that was accepted by teachers and indicated improvement in student engagement and reading comprehension,” supporting the idea that even simple breathing and emotion identification activities can positively impact academic outcomes.

Ok, that’s all for June!

Additional research of interest

Teacher Professional Development, Training, Education Policy

• Principal Leadership and the Virginia Literacy Act: From Policy Interpretation to Implementation
• An Exploration of K-1 Teachers’ Experiences with Curriculum Change: It’s All Too Much  (Dissertation, not yet peer-reviewed)
• Examining the Efficacy of Early Grade Retention Relating to the Mississippi Literacy-Based Promotion Act (Dissertation, not yet peer-reviewed)
• Pre-Kindergarten Teachers’ Perceptions of Teaching Early Literacy Skills Incorporating the Science of Reading (Dissertation, not yet peer-reviewed)

Assessment

• Classification Accuracy of i-Ready and Prior Year State Exams on Year-End Outcomes
• Comparing the Performance and Growth of Linguistically Diverse and English-Only Students on Commonly Used Early Literacy Measures

Foundational Skills, Word Reading, Phonics, Decoding, etc.

• Tracing the Impact of COVID-19 on Early Language and Literacy Development from Pre-K Through First Grade
• Positive effects of the Letterland curriculum on kindergarteners’ word reading skills and engagement behaviors: A comparison of two programs
• Independent Researcher Review of Commercial Reading Screening Assessment Suites May 2025
• Home Literacy Environment and Reading Acquisition in Finland
• Effects of Family Programs on Children’s Language and Literacy Skills: A ‘Tertiary’ Review of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses
• Examining the role of home literacy environment in the growth of morphological awareness from kindergarten to Grade 2
• Exploring the Implementation of the University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI) Foundations Program and the Intersecting Role of Coaching as a Catalyst for Professional Growth in Elementary Education (Dissertation, not yet peer-reviewed)

Dyslexia, At-risk readers, etc.

• School-based interventions for dyslexic readers during elementary grades do not improve reading as adults.
• Using diagnostic assessments to improve data use
• A Special Issue of the Journal of Learning Disabilities: Full Inclusion—Beliefs, Practices, and Evidence
• Speech categorization consistency is associated with language and reading abilities in school-age children: Implications for language and reading disorders
• Comparison in Overnight of Speech Consolidation Between Individuals With and Without a Diagnosis of Dyslexia ((Dissertation, not yet peer-reviewed)
• Promoting the Oral Reading Fluency of Elementary Students with Disabilities: Effects of a Multicomponent Reading Intervention (Dissertation, not yet peer-reviewed)

Multilingual Learners

• Can the Simple View of Reading Inform the Study of Reading Comprehension in Young Spanish Heritage Language Learners?
• The Impact of the Use of Artificial Intelligence–Generated Materials on Reading Motivation Among EFL Learners

Fluency, Comprehension

• How Does Reading Fiction Support Adolescents’ Wellbeing? A Qualitative Study Examining Positive Affect, Connection and Personal Growth (Open Access)
• The role of knowledge-rich curricula in promoting deep thinking and complex skill acquisition
• Initial Pilot of a Progress Monitor for Reading Comprehension Based on Sentence Ordering
• Rapid automatized naming neural networks in children and adults: Connections to reading and arithmetic fluency
• Speech Enabled Reading Fluency Assessment: a Validation Study
• Linguistically-driven text formatting improves reading comprehension: Evidence from 4th and 5th graders (not yet peer-reviewed)