Book leveling, a way to organize texts to match them with readers, has been widely implemented in primary classrooms. This article questions whether the often excessive attention to leveling leads to the neglect of other factors that influence the reader-text match. The authors present findings from a small study that aimed to determine the…

Instruction in narrative text structure on first graders' listening and reading comprehension was examined with a view to documenting strategy instruction and transfer of learning in beginning readers. Of interest was whether or not first-grade students (n=35) would, following instruction within the context of listening to stories, gain in…

Two curriculum evaluation projects were conducted in response to requests from practitioners interested in determining the quality of commercially developed reading programs. The 1st project, sponsored by 3 school districts in Texas, focused on 5 1st grade reading programs. The 2nd, conducted at the request of junior high, middle-, and high-school…

Reading well is at the heart of all learning. Without the ability to read, children can not succeed in school. Research has shown that most of the reading problems faced by adolescents and adults today could have been prevented if they'd gotten the proper help during early childhood. This brochure provides information about how parents can help…

In this article, the authors examined the effects of 1 year of supplemental instruction on first-grade children considered struggling readers on their phonics and reading comprehension achievement, along with second-grade children considered struggling readers on their reading comprehension achievement. This study included 196 children in 17…

In this article, findings from case study research of two effective literacy teachers are presented in order to describe in rich detail the nature of effective scaffolding. The teachers worked one-to-one with first-grade students who were experiencing extreme difficulty in learning to read. The complexity of scaffolding is described in terms of…

Studies of the relationship between policy and practice typically focus on the formal policy system alone. Yet, the public policy system does not exist in isolation. A host of nonsystem actors promote, translate, and transform policy ideas as they carry them to teachers. This study draws on neoinstitutional theories of organization to investigate…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has regularly assessed the reading skills of U.S. fourth-graders since the early 1970s, but few national studies have assessed the reading skills of children when they enter kindergarten and then documented the development of these skills through fifth grade. This analysis uses data from the…

This study investigates prospective relationships between phonemic awareness and reading performance during the first year of Finnish primary school. Pedagogical interest lay in finding out whether systematic use of phonics in reading instruction supported children's reading performance even if children can already decode. A total of 85 children…

This Manual provides the foundation for a reading and spelling course which avoids use of the phonic method. Instead of teaching the word as a whole and afterward subjecting it to phonic analysis, this Synthetic Method takes the sounds of the letters for the starting point, and with these sounds lay a foundation firm and broad, upon which is built…

The purpose of this study was to contribute to and strengthen previous work that examined the long-lasting effects of Reading Recovery in statewide efforts aimed at bolstering early literacy achievement and reducing early learning difficulties. Specifically, the study explored the literacy achievement of Reading Recovery participants whose series…

Reading Recovery is a short-term intervention for first-grade children with reading and writing difficulties. This longitudinal study investigated the performance of a cohort of 1998 Reading Recovery students on later literacy achievement as measured by the 2001 Grade 4 Maine Educational Assessment (MEA). The results showed that the average MEA…

The materials included in this manual are organized according to the Indiana Grade 1 Academic Standards for English/Language Arts. In each section teachers will find: (1) Indiana Grade 1 Academic Standards for English/Language Arts; (2) Assessments: diagnostic/practice pages for skill areas, checklists, and rubrics; (3) Classroom Activities:…

The increasing demand for improved student performance in the context of significant time constraints places considerable stress on educators and administrators to develop innovative strategies that promote literacy acquisition. This article describes the procedures and outlines the evaluative data for Reading Their Way, a literacy acquisition…

A first-grade reading and language development intervention for English language learners (Spanish/English) at risk for reading difficulties was examined. The intervention was conducted in the same language as students' core reading instruction (English). Two hundred sixteen first-grade students from 14 classrooms in 4 schools from 2 districts…