The purpose of this article was to offer guidance to educators in evaluating the strengths, weaknesses, and most effective uses of commercial reading assessment suites. We provide three resources to help educators who are responsible for making instructional decisions in reading using formal screening, benchmark, interim, and progress-monitoring…

This formative and design study examined how the Complex Text Analysis (CTA) instructional approach provided support for first-grade students to increase their comprehension of texts of increasing complexity. The students in the diverse class participated in weekly lessons during which fictional texts were read aloud and analyzed in terms of key…

Reports that first grade children could be taught auditory perceptual skills, but that this training did not have a significant effect on their reading achievement. (Author/FL)

Concludes that speed in identifying letters and graphonemes correlates highly with reading achievement. (RB)

Reports a study indicating that an informal program of training in visual perception was equivalent to a formal program both in producing better results on a visual perception measure and on a reading achievement test. (TO)

Examines how different types of word recognition instruction appeared to affect students with different early literacy foundations. Finds differences in instructional practices to be related to growth in reading. Identifies four classroom practices that seemed to have the greatest success with children entering first grade with minimal reading…

Discusses research which shows that activity-centered classes do affect self-concept positively and may increase reading achievement for some first graders. (JM)

Researches a basal reading and a language arts method of teaching reading, advancing the possibility of using reading readiness instead of intelligence tests to predict later reading achievement. (RB)

Rural Brazilian first graders who read stories about their local environment performed better than their counterparts who read stories with urban settings. (MKM)

Investigates eight first-grade whole language classrooms in terms of what phonics skills and concepts were taught, where phonics instruction occurred, and how it was conducted. Shows gains in ability to decode and encode words for all students. Finds that teachers responded to individual needs of learners, and that skills were taught within the…

Suggests the use of programed reading as a supplement to basal readers in order to improve word knowledge, word discrimination, and reading comprehension. (RW)