This study evaluated the effectiveness of a multicomponent early literacy curriculum that included phonics and phonemic awareness in comparison to a sight word approach. A total of 93 students with severe developmental disabilities who were enrolled in Grades K through 4 were randomly assigned to either a multicomponent early literacy curriculum…

Fasko, Jr. Bowling Green State University Abstract The purpose of the study was to assess the effectiveness of a tutoring intervention for sight word acquisition and to examine whether progress was matched by improvement in oral reading fluency. Three primary students were selected based upon teachers' referral for poor reading fluency. Flashcards…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of simultaneous prompting on acquisition of letter-sound correspondences and blending skills of previously taught words for three elementary students with moderate intellectual disabilities, and to measure generalization of those skills to untaught words. The three students were first taught to…

Reading fluency is commonly defined as reading accurately at a quick rate with appropriate prosody--a simple sounding definition. In fact, this definition hides complex processes and skills needed to produce the seemingly effortless performance of a fluent reader. Using both theory and empirical research, the presence and role of underlying…

Many school systems mandate sight word mastery by their students, and this can be challenging for certain student populations. With a Professional Development School, college interns conducted an inquiry project with struggling first graders to learn required sight vocabulary. The inquiry project explored the use of American Sign Language to…

The purpose of this study was to study the effect of pairing reading racetracks and flashcards for the teaching of sight words. The first participant was diagnosed with a specific learning disability in reading and writing and was also diagnosed with ADHD. The second participant was diagnosed with a specific learning disability in reading,…

Activity schedules are often used to facilitate task engagement and transition for children with autism. This study evaluated whether conditional discrimination training would serve to transfer the control from activity-schedule pictures to printed words (i.e., derived textual control). Two preschoolers with autism were taught to select pictures…

The current study examined the sight word acquisition rate (AR) of 43 second-grade students who were English language learners (ELL) from three diverse, urban schools. The AR was analyzed in relation to each student's oral proficiency in English, and examined whether or not children who are ELL but have a higher level of English proficiency would…

A sample of 141 Canadian children in grades 3 through 6 wrote to dictation 24 short sentences sampling 90 lexical items representing 10 inflectional morphological categories to study their relation to the written spelling of 40 sight words. The children were encouraged in 3, 30-minute teaching sessions to use multiple strategies of retrieval,…

Young children who are English language learners (ELLs) face major challenges in learning to read English. This study examined whether computer-assisted instruction (CAI) can be beneficial to ELL kindergartners enrolled in bilingual classes. The CAI programs provided systematic and structured exercises in developing phonological awareness and…

Jacob, Bart, and Carl are children with intellectual disabilities (ID; i.e., mental retardation) who experience significant difficulty in learning to read. In the past, most research about reading methods for students with ID focused on teaching students to memorize sight words, a method that is clearly effective. Memorization of sight words is…

The effects of SMART Board technology, an interactive electronic whiteboard, and a 3s constant time delay (CTD) procedure was evaluated for teaching sight word reading to students with moderate intellectual disabilties within a small group arrangment. A multiple probe design across three word sets and replicated with three students was used to…

A fiercely contested debate in teaching reading concerns the respective roles and merits of reading schemes and real books. Underpinning the controversy are different philosophies and beliefs about how children learn to read. However, to some extent debates have largely been rhetoric-driven, rather than research-driven. This article provides a…

Two versions of RAVE-O, a fluency-based reading intervention were examined over a 2-intervention period: a 9-month, 44-hour afterschool intervention program, and a month long, 44-hour summer intervention program. 80 children in grades 1-3 were tested on the two subtests of the Test of Word-Reading Efficiency and were assigned to one of 6 groups…

This study examined the components of a one-on-one literacy tutoring model to identify the necessary and sufficient elements for helping struggling beginning readers. The tutoring components of interest included word work using manipulative letters, written word work, and a generalization component. Reading assessment data from 100 first-grade…