Teachers must devote significant time to making the instructional decisions necessary to effectively plan and prepare small group lessons. Although small group instruction has attracted the attention of researchers, there is a lack of understanding in the effective implementation of reading interventions to support struggling readers. The purpose…

How children understand reading and who they are as readers comprises children's reading identities. Reading identities can have very real effects on the reading outcomes of children, and may support the development of foundational reading skills and the process of learning to read (McCarthey & Moje, 2002). Despite the potential importance of…

This teaching tip outlines a comprehension strategy designed to support early primary students in reading to learn while learning to read. The strategy is born of the authors' classroom practices and is designed to support young children in reading and understanding informational texts by facilitating close interactions between text and reader.…

As governments, donors and implementation organisations re-focus Education for All Goals in terms of quality of education, increasing concerns have been raised over low literacy levels in developing countries. This paper provides key learning from the application of an early reading intervention applied in post-conflict Liberia, which included a…

The purpose of this study was to examine how executive function skills in verbal and nonverbal auditory tasks are related to early reading skills in beginning readers. Kindergarteners (N = 41, aged 5 years) completed verbal (phonemes) and nonverbal (environmental sounds) Continuous Performance tasks yielding measures of executive function (misses,…

Drawing from a four-year critical ethnographic study of young girls and their literacy practices inside and outside school, this article foregrounds a lived pedagogical moment when conflicting discourses about reading instruction collided in a critically focused second-grade classroom. Through my analyses I make the argument that the pervasiveness…

This study examined the relations among features of the classroom physical literacy environment (book materials, literacy area and writing materials) and psychological literacy environment (instructional support), and preschool children's gains in two areas of emergent literacy over an academic year. Results showed that features of the physical…

This study examines the relations among the classroom literacy environment, children's interest and engagement in literacy activities, and children's early reading skills in a sample of 167 children aged 4 and 5 years enrolled in 31 Head Start classrooms. Researchers rated the classroom literacy environment. Teachers reported on children's…

Early reading acquisition skills have been linked to verbal short-term memory (STM) capacity. However, the nature of this relationship remains controversial because verbal STM, like reading acquisition, depends on the complexity of underlying phonological processing skills. This longitudinal study addressed the relation between STM and reading…

The purpose of this study was to examine the concurrent validity of the assessment for an early language and literacy project. The goal of the project was to promote a successful transition to kindergarten for preschoolers who were at risk for reading difficulties by equipping them with the necessary language and literacy skills needed for early…

This study compared word recognition for words written in a traditional flat font to the same words written in a three-dimensional appearing font determined to create a right hemispheric stimulation. The participants were emergent readers enrolled in Montessori schools in the United States learning to read basic CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant)…

Early reading exposure is important in setting a foundation for students to acquire the basic literacy skills that set them up for school and life success. More importantly, parent involvement at an early age is a critical component of reading skills development. This report presents an overview of the Reading Together Program that introduced…

Speech problems and reading disorders are linked, suggesting that speech problems may potentially be an early marker of later difficulty in associating graphemes with phonemes. Current norms suggest that complete mastery of the production of the consonant phonemes in English occurs in most children at around 6-7 years. Many children enter formal…

Children learn to read at approximately the same stage in life as they start to master their physical environment. This article argues that some of the same mapping and schema-building strategies inform each activity, and draws on examples from a broad range of children's books to support the idea that reading fiction and mapping one's local…

This study examined the effectiveness of a classroom teacher intervention, the Targeted Reading Intervention (TRI), in helping struggling readers in kindergarten and first grade. This intervention used biweekly literacy coaching in the general education classroom to help classroom teachers use diagnostic strategies with struggling readers in…