Recent efforts to motivate parents' involvement in their child's literacy development involve informing parents about how to incorporate literacy development into daily routines. Teacher leadership and communication are critical--the more teachers encourage and assist parents and caregivers in supporting their child's literacy development, the…

This column provides background science information for elementary teachers. Many innovations with computer software begin with analysis of how humans do a task. This article takes a look at how humans recognize spoken words and explains the origins of speech-recognition software.

Learning to read begins at home through everyday parent-child interactions, long before children attend school. Parents' continuing support of literacy development throughout elementary school positively affects their children's reading ability. Many recent efforts to motivate parents to be involved in their child's literacy development involve…

This is a companion to the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) practice guide, "Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten through 3rd Grade" (ED566956). This guide is organized according to the four recommendations and how-to steps from the WWC practice guide. The activities follow the typical developmental…

This Kindergarten Teacher's Guide provides information for kindergarten teachers on how to support families as they practice foundational reading skills at home. It serves as a companion to the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade. Both guides present four…

The goal of the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Practice Guide, "Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten through 3rd Grade," is to offer educators specific, evidence-based recommendations for teaching foundational reading skills to students in kindergarten through 3rd grade. The guide suggests…

Grounded in a strong evidence base, this indispensable text and practitioner guide has given thousands of teachers tools to support the literacy growth of beginning and struggling readers in grades K-2. The interactive strategies approach (ISA) is organized around core instructional goals related to enhancing word learning and comprehension of…

This book presents a research-supported framework for early literacy instruction that aligns with multi-tiered response-to-intervention (RTI) models. The book focuses on giving teachers a better understanding of literacy development and how to effectively support children as they begin to read and write. The authors' interactive strategies…

All teachers recognize the importance of matching literacy instruction to the ability level and needs of each child--but how can this crucial goal actually be accomplished? This indispensable book provides a research-based framework and flexible, highly practical strategies for making differentiated instruction work. Written by leading experts,…

This article focuses on a concept that has rarely been studied in beginning reading research--a child's concept of word in text. Recent examinations of this phenomenon suggest that a child's ability to match spoken words to written words while reading--a concept of word in text--plays a pivotal role in early reading development. In this article,…

For students with moderate or severe disabilities, developing literacy skills is a critical component of successful communication, employment, and community participation. Finally, educators have a practical, concise guidebook for helping these students meet NCLB's academic standards for literacy. Appropriate for use in all settings, including…

This article focuses on practical classroom ideas for enhancing early literacy learning by teaching a broad range of metalinguistic skills. These skills include phonemic and word awareness, but focus largely on syntactic and pragmatic skills in order to give children a richer understanding of language and its functions. Theoretical background is…

Most struggling readers, including those with reading disabilities, have difficulties recognizing printed words. This unique, lucidly written book synthesizes the research on how children learn to read words skillfully and translates it into step-by-step strategies for the classroom. The author demonstrates how to plan and implement a coordinated…

Suggesting that beginning reading should be a combination of phonics instruction along with the "whole word" approach, this book presents 56 brief and concentrated units of study that demonstrate that both systems can work together to improve the process of learning to read. In all units in the book, learners have the opportunity to read complete…

Reports on a study of the relationship of both phonemic and musical sound discrimination to reading ability among 18 British first graders. Finds that discrimination of musical sounds is related to music performance but that the influential factor is a specific awareness of pitch changes. (CFR)