In this article, I consider social class and reading performance, outline a non-categorical approach to reading disability, describe the reading intervention program we have developed for older low-progress readers and seek to demonstrate how students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds can, and do, make substantial progress when offered…

This program, one of those included in "Effective Reading Programs...," is used as a supplementary program for over 400 first graders in 17 classes at eight elementary schools. The children, most of whom are white, come from middle-income families in a small city. The program was developed to strengthen the basic reading program by using…

This article describes PHAST (for Phonological and Strategy Training), a research-based remedial reading program that focuses on the primary obstacles to word identification learning and independent decoding that most students with reading disabilities face and the steps necessary to help these children achieve independent reading skills.…

This paper describes the Reading Recovery program implemented at a special needs school in Kiel, Germany. The program is intended to offer primary-grade pupils a second chance to obtain reading and writing skills. The highly structured reading program involves isolation of difficulties, work on word structure, learning consonant-vowel combinations…

Project Success Controlled Optimal Reading Experience (SCORE) is a sequential phonics program designed to teach students of any age who are deficient in basic word attack skills or who are reading below the fourth grade level. Performance objectives of the program include student mastery of sound blending, short and long vowels, blends,…

This paper describes development of a bank of interventions in response to individual student needs identified by Student Study Teams (SSTs) in the Horry County (South Carolina) school district. It also describes the training of SST members in the selection, application, and monitoring of each intervention. Following a survey that identified basic…

The report drawn from the first annual conference that was designed to provide professional dialogue for those interested in the improvement of college reading programs, this volume contains seven papers that deal with the following topics: the role of literary criticism and rhetoric in developing new models of reading comprehension, a pilot…

This article describes the inclusion model implemented at two elementary schools in Minnesota and the educational experiences of a second grader and a sixth grader. One school's locally developed model focused on an alternative phonetic reading program for students at risk or with disabilities; the other school focused on team teaching. (DB)

In the past, phonics instruction has done little to lessen the difficulties that many poor readers have with decoding words quickly and accurately enough to construct meaning from text. Based on an analysis of the research literature in decoding and a four-year cycle of program development, a new program was created for teaching decoding to poor…

The mother of a son with dyslexia documents her son's success in learning to read in a private school using the Orton-Gillingham approach and her efforts to bring that approach into the public schools of Delaware, through Project ASSIST (Alphabetic Sound Symbol Instruction Systematically Taught) and its volunteer tutors and teacher training.…

Reading First is a federal initiative authorized by the No Child Left Behind Act. The U.S. Department of Education provides Reading First grants to states, which, in turn, award subgrants to eligible school districts that submit approved proposals for how they will apply scientifically based reading research to improve reading instruction and…