This article explains the importance of alphabet books in early reading development. Alphabet books encourage literacy development in the following ways: (1) unlock the symbols of language; (2) connect knowledge to other sources; (3) provide book usage knowledge to young children; (4) complement children's enjoyment of books; and (5) aid early…

Living in an age of communication, literacy is an extremely integral part of our society. We are impacted by literature during our infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. "Literacy for the New Millennium" includes information from specialists in the field who discuss the influence of popular culture, media, and technology on…

Teaching young children to read is the most critical educational priority facing this country. Encouragingly, this is an area where some of the best and most rigorous scientifically based research is available. The Reading First program helps States and districts apply this research--and the proven instructional and assessment tools consistent…

Background: Phonological awareness is known to be an excellent predictor of later reading acquisition. It remains unclear, however, whether phoneme manipulation alone best explains this association or whether an additional direct contribution of onset-rime awareness is predictive. This issue is explored here. Method: A longitudinal study is…

High/Scope's approach to education is a blend of Jean Piaget's constructivist theory of child development and the best of traditional teacher experience. The High/Scope approach is about helping students gain knowledge and skills in important content areas, such as language and literacy, initiative and social relations, movement, music, and…

This study examined the effectiveness of the Montana Early Literacy Project (MELP) curriculum on literacy and language skills of preschool-age children in Head Start. The MELP model utilizes everyday events and existing routines of classroom and home environments to build literacy and language directly into children's daily experiences. Using a…

Apart from the annual returns to the Ministry of Education of Reading Recovery (RR) data (and to a lesser extent, the four-yearly National Education Monitoring Project cycle data), there is currently no national data sets of reading achievement information for New Zealand primary school children. This article uses the national RR data for 2002 as…

Researchers and educators acknowledge that early reading instruction is of critical importance, with interventions and remedial programming most effective in the primary grades. Integral to this programming are educators' abilities to assess students' reading strengths and needs, with inconsistent and/or inaccurate practices ultimately threatening…

Early literacy experiences play an important role in later literacy skills and school achievement. Communities offer early literacy experiences in a variety of venues to meet the diverse needs of families. The author of this article provides four vignettes illustrating community-based early literacy activities: (1) private group classes such as…

This report focuses on a family of interventions that includes all "Direct Instruction" products ("DISTAR" and "Language for Learning"). "Direct Instruction" was used to refer to this family of interventions, as well as to all versions past and present. "Direct Instruction" includes teaching…

This study investigated the ability of temporal processing measures obtained before school entry to predict early reading development in an unselected sample of 125 children (68 males, 57 females). Visual and auditory temporal order judgment (TOJ) tasks measured at Preschool (mean age 5.36 years) significantly predicted letter and word…

This study examined a new screening tool (Get Ready to Read) for assessing early reading skills in 73 three-year-old and 79 four-year-old children from low-income families and relating performance to more extensive assessments of phonological sensitivity and language skills (vocabulary and print knowledge) that have been found to be related to the…

Teachers and teacher educators are faced with an urgent responsibility to support the learning of an increasingly diverse population of young children. Based on the sociocultural perspective of reading, a literature-based approach is outlined for early reading teachers. The implications of this approach to teacher education programs are further…

"A Focus on Professional Development" is the fourth in the Research-Based Practices in Early Reading Series published by the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) at Pacific Resources for Education and Learning (PREL). Because reading proficiency is fundamental to student achievement across all subjects and grades, the preparation of the teachers…

According to a recent study by the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) at the London School of Economics, poverty and social exclusion have been taken very seriously by this Government, resulting in high-profile targets, new policies and funding streams. Social exclusion was recognised to consist of multi-faceted and interlinked…