In teaching reading, educators strive to find the balance between a code-emphasis approach and a meaning-oriented literacy approach. However, little is known about how different approaches to literacy can benefit bilingual children's early reading acquisition. To investigate the novel hypothesis that children's age of first bilingual exposure can…

Fluency is known as the bridge between phonics and comprehension. Teachers of reading provide high-quality instruction in phonics and decoding strategies, usually in a small-group format, but may be unsure how to insert fluency instruction into the small-group lesson. This article presents key concepts in fluency instruction and a description of…

A phonics-based reading curriculum in which students used an iPad to respond was created for students with developmental disabilities not able to verbally participate in traditional phonics instruction due to their use of augmentative and assistive communication. Time delay and a system of least prompts used in conjunction with text-to-speech…

Five years ago, as a way to ensure that students not only learn to decode but also understand what they decode, the Core Knowledge Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes the Core Knowledge curriculum, created a language arts program for kindergarten through second grade. The program includes two 60-minute strands: (1) a "Skills Strand," in which…

"Open Court Reading"[c] is a core reading program for grades K-6 developed by SRA/McGraw-Hill that is designed to teach decoding, comprehension, inquiry, and writing in a logical progression. Part 1 of each unit, Preparing to Read, focuses on phonemic awareness, sounds and letters, phonics, fluency, and word knowledge. Part 2, Reading…

"Odyssey Reading," published by CompassLearning[R], is a web-based K-12 reading/language arts program designed to allow for instructional differentiation and data-driven decision making. The online program includes electronic curricula and materials for individual or small-group work, assessments aligned with state curriculum standards,…

In the Jackson and Coltheart theory of acquisition of word reading it is claimed that, near the beginning of the partial alphabetic phase of development, children have full use of abstract letter units (ALUs). This claim and less exclusive alternatives were examined. In Experiment 1, normal progress children with on average 9 months of school…

A multiple-baseline across participants was used to analyze the effects of adding multisensory elements to an explicit, systematic phonics program on the reading achievement of six students identified as treatment resisters. Participants were given 10 minutes of daily instruction in the supplemental program in addition to instruction in the…

Group training on segmentation-blending training forms (SB) in conjunction with strategies for decoding novel words (WD) was assessed in kindergarteners. Neither the WD or SB factor was found to significantly affect novel word decoding performance, although the results indicated that the sounding out SB form led to considerable success in word…

This volume, a revision of "Phonics and the Teaching of Reading," is designed to offer practical help to teachers, especially in the area of phonics. Attention is given to the influence that linguistics has had on reading over the last decade and to those features of linguistics that have affected phonics methodology and instructional materials.…

This book is concerned with the skill of learning to read and factors primarily related to teaching the beginning reading skills. The contents include: "Rationale," which discusses abilities related to reading, reading as a different medium, decoding coming before reading, decoding as separate from reading, hypotheses for decoding, and a…

A word attack program that begins with phonics and incorporates various aspects of a linguistics approach is described in this paper. Regardless of the material that is used, there are 13 consonant sounds which are easier to learn than others: b, d, j, f, k, p, t, l, m, n, r, v, and z. W and h would be introduced next because in isolation they…

This paper analyzes evidence related to the effectiveness of vowel generalization from two viewpoints: the nature of letter-sound and sound-letter relationships as derived from Dewey, Hanna, and Hillerich, and the nature of these relationships as derived from results of teaching vowel generalizations to children. From the evidence and the research…

The topic of illiteracy in the United States is discussed by five people in this transcript of "Options on Education." These five, each of whom approaches illiteracy in a different way, are George Weber, Associate Director of the Council for Basic Education; Mike Smith, Director for Essential Skills of the National Institute of…

The purpose of this study was to compare the phonics skills mastered by three groups of fifth and sixth grade students. Sixty fifth and sixth grade students from an open area school were selected as subjects--14 students were reading at third grade instructional level, 15 students at fourth grade instructional level, and 31 students at fifth grade…