Background: Beginning reading skills are often taught using phonics. Research has demonstrated the effectiveness of phonics with typically developing students, but less research has evaluated this method with students with intellectual disabilities. Method: This paper evaluated the computerized phonics-based intervention Headsprout Early Reading®…

In fall of 2019, the EdWeek Research Center set out to gain a clearer sense of nationwide teacher and teacher education perceptions and practices by sending out two surveys about topics related to early reading instruction, especially as it related to phonics. One survey was taken by 674 K-2 and elementary special education teachers who indicated…

This article explores Shared Reading as an instructional approach that mimics home reading experiences in a group setting for young children. The article includes information about how to use enlarged text as the teacher provides experiences with books that first focus on the meaning and enjoyment of the story and then shifts to how print works…

An analysis of large and influential published reviews of research pertaining to the reading acquisition of young struggling readers in the early years of schooling was undertaken. The reviews were selected on the basis that they either had been commissioned by federal governments or had been conducted by reputable research institutions and had…

This study attempted to provide a systematic framework for phonics instruction for beginning readers in literature-based classrooms based on relative frequency of phoneme-grapheme occurrences found in three distinct corpora. The first corpus contained an academic word list. The second corpus contained the running text from 363 books identified as…

Direct quotation can be a source of meaning in storybook texts for beginning readers. The author of this article sketches the linguistic complexity of direct quotation and offers instructional strategies. Three aspects of direct quotation are examined: the cluster of print features and syntactic characteristics that direct quotation involves, the…

This study examined the validity of Nonsense Word Fluency as an index of beginning reading proficiency for students in kindergarten through second grade. Validity evidence for Nonsense Word Fluency is addressed in the context of research-based instructional practices implemented on a large scale. Technical adequacy data are presented for all…

This article focuses on a concept that has rarely been studied in beginning reading research--a child's concept of word in text. Recent examinations of this phenomenon suggest that a child's ability to match spoken words to written words while reading--a concept of word in text--plays a pivotal role in early reading development. In this article,…

A sample of 236 4- to 6-year olds was tested on aspects of lexical and sublexical development while learning to read and retested 1 year later. Reading development, the influence of lexical and sublexical processes, age differences, and implications for instruction are discussed. (SLD)

Decoding unknown words when reading text is a necessary tool of skilled readers. Beginning readers need repeated opportunities to develop decoding ability. We investigated whether explicitly teaching essential components of beginning reading instruction promoted first graders' skill in decoding pseudowords. We employed a multiple- baseline design…

This biliography contains annotations of publications relating to theory, research, and practice in early reading (reading prior to the time a child begins attending school). The 142 annotations are listed under the following headings: comprehensive studies, theoretical issues, pedagogical issues, empirical issues, reviews, and bibliographies. (RL)

Examines the history of preschool reading instruction, what researchers recommend, and what is actually happening in preschools, then asks whether reading should be taught to young children. (FL)

Describes the use of 10 word picture books to enrich the language experience of young children and to motivate their reading. (HOD)

This article focuses on practical classroom ideas for enhancing early literacy learning by teaching a broad range of metalinguistic skills. These skills include phonemic and word awareness, but focus largely on syntactic and pragmatic skills in order to give children a richer understanding of language and its functions. Theoretical background is…

Evaluates some of the 100 different teaching approaches to beginning reading and reading theory. (Author/RB)