Across the pendulum-like changes in beginning reading instruction over the past 30 years, three interrelated ideas emerge as the key to preventing reading failure in kindergarten and first grade: (1) an interesting, carefully-leveled book curriculum; (2) a leveled phonics curriculum; and (3) a well-trained teacher who knows how to integrate guided…

We now have an evidence base that documents that we could teach every child to read by the end of first grade. However, most schools have almost none of the key aspects of instruction that have been available in the research to ensure we achieve this goal. In this paper I argue that this failure is not the result of inadequate funding but rather…

In this "Struggling Readers" department, the author describes a collaborative lesson--a professional development strategy adapted from Reading Recovery. Collaborative lessons involve a small group of educators who collaborate to help a student who is struggling with reading. While collaborative lessons were initially designed by Reading Recovery…

In this article, the authors present a snapshot of how one kindergarten and Reading Recovery teacher organized instruction in her classroom, enabling her to provide constructively responsive reading assessment and instruction for her developing and struggling readers. (Contains 2 figures.)

Teachers are constantly assessing their students, whether it is formally or informally. They use screening, diagnostic, and outcome assessments to determine areas of concern and then monitor the progress of the students based on the interventions given. They are called upon to intervene with prevention in mind, helping students catch up as they…

Questions the degree to which intensive emotional emphasis on successfully learning to read contributes to reading failure and discusses some potential outcomes of permitting students to reject reading. (TO)

States that the term "reading disability" is a disease metaphor that narrows our ability to work with failure and that it is necessary to diagnosis a child's reading problem accurately in order to treat the problem adequately. (MKM)

Points out that current alarmist rhetoric about widespread reading failure is not based on facts. (HOD)

In 1990, Cunningham developed a Names Test as a quick and easy screening tool for teachers to obtain information about a student's decoding skills. In 1994, Duffelmeyer, Kruse, Merkley, and Fyfe added 10 names to the original Names Test and developed a comprehensive scoring matrix to increase diagnostic information from the test, based on error…

Offers suggestions for helping the older child who has not learned to read, including developing a sight word bank using a memorized book, using these sight words as the basis for decoding instruction, and including the nonreader in a reading group. (ARH)

Proposes the need to isolate differences in languages and universally define reading failure. (TO)

Reviews research concerned with factors contributing to the reading success and failure of children. (FL)

Discusses the use of colored plastic overlays and tinted lens filters to benefit at-risk readers who have the visual perceptual problem known as Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome. (MG)

Suggests that the lack of coherence between remedial programs and regular classrooms impedes the progress of students with reading difficulties. Provides an outline for an instructional program in which classroom and specialist teachers collaborate to provide the learner with coherent and balanced instruction. (ARH)

Describes how specially trained teachers working with small groups of children helped to reduce the risk of failure that was threatening many low-achieving first grade students. Provides details of the Early Intervention in Reading Program of a small school district in the midwest. (PRA)