The need for effective reading instruction is of high priority. One of the many ways that students learn to read is through multisensory instruction. Elementary-age students struggle to become proficient readers. This is due to the lack of reading skills. The goal of reading is comprehension. As students learn letter-sound correspondence,…

Fluency with skills that operate below the word level (i.e., sublexical), such as phonemic awareness and alphabetic knowledge, may ease the acquisition of decoding skills (Ritchey & Speece, 2006). Measures of sublexical fluency such as phoneme segmentation fluency (PSF), letter naming fluency (LNF), and letter sound fluency (LSF) are widely…

The What Works Clearinghouse™ is a federally funded source of scientific evidence for what works in education. The What Works Clearinghouse aims to disseminate findings from rigorous education research to the education community. One mechanism for accomplishing this aim is the production of practice guides. Panels of national content experts,…

Central questions in the study of visual word recognition and developmental dyslexia are whether early lexical activation precedes and supports decoding (a dual-stage view) or not (dual-route view), and the locus of deficits in dysfluent reading. The dual-route view predicts early word frequency and length interaction, whereas the dual-stage view…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of word boxes on the phoneme segmentation, word identification, and spelling performance of a sample of children with autism. Three children with autism were selected on the basis of similar performance on early literacy skills as measured by the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills…

This study examined the response of two students in the Southwestern United States with autism spectrum disorder and IQ in the intellectual disability range to a comprehensive, text-based reading intervention. The intervention, "Friends on the Block," includes multiple strands of literacy providing explicit instruction in phonics,…

A hallmark of skilled reading is recognizing written words automatically from memory by sight. How beginning readers attain this skill is explained. They must acquire foundational knowledge, including phonemic segmentation, grapheme-phoneme knowledge, decoding, and spelling skills. When these skills are applied, spellings of words become bonded to…

Two groups of freshman students, enrolled in a Vocabulary I and Reading I courses, participated in the study. Before instruction, both groups took a recognition (vocabulary) and a production (oral reading) pre-test. Comparisons of the pre-test scores showed no significant differences between the experimental and control group in decoding skills…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of an 18-day summer tutoring program in which graduate student tutors delivered 15 minutes of differentiated reading instruction (DRI) and a 30-minute interactive read-aloud (IRA) lesson each day. Students in grades K-5 (N = 179) attending a summer program at one urban elementary school…

Two experiments explored rates for introducing grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and the types of correspondences taught for optimal alphabet and early literacy skills learning. In both studies, children entered with minimal alphabet knowledge and were randomly assigned within classrooms to one of two treatments delivered individually over…

Recent efforts to motivate parents' involvement in their child's literacy development involve informing parents about how to incorporate literacy development into daily routines. Teacher leadership and communication are critical--the more teachers encourage and assist parents and caregivers in supporting their child's literacy development, the…

It is now widely accepted that phonological language skills are a critical foundation for learning to read (decode). This longitudinal study investigated the predictive relationship between a range of key phonological language skills and early reading development in a sample of 191 children in their first year at school. The study also explored…

Two experiments explored rates for introducing grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and the types of correspondences taught for optimal alphabet and early literacy skills learning. In both studies, children entered with minimal alphabet knowledge and were randomly assigned within classrooms to one of two treatments delivered individually over…

The purpose of this study was to examine the profiles of nonresponders among native Chinese-speaking students struggling in English reading before and after an intensive intervention in phonological awareness as well as letter knowledge. Struggling English learners (n = 72) were screened from 668 Grade 4 students based on their English word…

We assessed the Swiss-German version of GraphoLearn, a computer game designed to support reading by training grapheme-phoneme correspondences. A group of 34 children at risk for dyslexia trained three times a week during 14 weeks, on top of their standard school instruction. The sample was divided into two groups of 18 and 16 children, who started…