The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy levels of kindergarten through second-grade teachers in their ability to provide reading instruction to students with a focus on the five foundational areas of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. In addition, the study sought to make recommendations…

Stagnant standardized test scores keep literacy achievement at the forefront of national education discussions. Increased conversations about the science of reading have propelled investigations into different types of phonics instruction. However, questions still linger such as "Which strategies are most effective for which students?",…

Problem Statement: As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, students were negatively impacted academically and social-emotionally (Kuhfeld et al., 2020). Preexisting academic inequities were exacerbated, especially for students of color, students with disabilities, multilingual learners, and those from low-income backgrounds (Kuhfeld et al., 2022).…

Students who do not read proficiently by the end of first grade are likely to remain poor readers and suffer academic difficulties across all subjects during their school career (Moats, 2017). Therefore, early identification and intervention of reading difficulties are essential for students' academic success (Partanen & Siegel, 2014; Vadasy…

A brief experiment was designed to examine cognitive flexibility practice embedded in beginning phonics instruction for kindergarteners with limited early literacy learning. Previously tested phonics content included single- and high-frequency two-letter grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs), introduced at a rate of 2-4 correspondences per week.…

This study utilized a systematic review methodology to explore best practices in improving reading fluency. The literature was searched to determine how the current curricular trends of technology, phonemic awareness and phonics, independent reading, and complex text and vocabulary can improve reading fluency in K-12 students. Potential studies…

A brief experiment was designed to examine cognitive flexibility practice embedded in beginning phonics instruction for kindergarteners with limited early literacy learning. Previously tested phonics content included single- and high-frequency two-letter grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs), introduced at a rate of 2-4 correspondences per week.…

The purpose of this quasi-experimental quantitative study was to determine whether the supplemental phonics program, Fundations, improved reading skills over time. Ehri's theory of orthographic mapping served as the theoretical framework for this study. Archival data from 254 second grade students who did, or did not, participate in the…

The purpose of this qualitative, multiple case study was to explore the utilization of music to teach phonics in kindergarten at four elementary schools in northwest Ohio. The theory guiding this study was the schema theory as it explains how individuals are able to recognize patterns previously learned, organize those patterns, and then use those…

This report documents the norming study procedure used to produce the achievement and growth user norms for English MAP Reading Fluency Foundational Skills. It also provides snapshots of the achievement and growth norms for each grade and domain.

Most private schools in India follow the Alphabet-Spelling method to teach reading in English. This approach bypasses letter-sound correspondences and focuses on rote memorization and sight-word recognition. In an effort to provide students with more recent evidence-based practices in reading instruction, this study examined how phonics-based…

The decades-long and contentious debate over how students are taught to read centers around the role that phonics and alphabetic code-related skills have in reading instruction. Some claim that these skills are not prioritized in most elementary classrooms because teacher education programs do not adequately prepare preservice teachers (PSTs) to…

Educators and researchers have been fighting the reading wars for the last century, with battles see-sawing literacy instruction in American schools from phonics to whole language and, most recently, back to phonics again. Over the last decade, 32 states and the District of Columbia have adopted new "science of reading" laws that require…

This transnational comparative study between Costa Rica and the United States provides an in-depth understanding of the similarities and differences of the early literacy practices of educators in the Pre-Kindergarten to Kindergarten classroom settings. Drawing upon Costa Rica's curricular approach to Early Childhood Education, based upon the…

Knowing that each student's academic success relies on his/her reading proficiency, schools must implement effective instructional reading models so that students can move from learning to read to reading to learn in the early years of development. The purpose of this inquiry was to evaluate the effectiveness of a kindergarten and first grade…