Early reading intervention is crucial to ensure all students develop strong foundational literacy skills for academic and lifelong success. This Spotlight will help readers investigate the benefits of tutoring on early reading skills; identify how to build students' reading stamina; gain insights into knowledge-building curricula; review the…

The rhetoric of the reading wars has become more than just an armchair academic debate, but is encoded now in the very laws, house and senate bills, and legislative policies of the majority of the states. In turn, these policies are powered by staggering sums of money such as the 90-million-dollar investment of Fulton County, Georgia in a revamp…

The purpose of this article is to describe the current research base and identify research needs related to response to intervention (RTI) frameworks in primary-grade reading. Research is reviewed on early reading instruction and intervention, the implementation of multitiered reading interventions, and the determination of intervention…

As computers become an increasingly ubiquitous part of young children's lives there is a need to examine how best to harness digital technologies to promote learning in early childhood education contexts. The development of emergent literacy skills is 1 domain for which numerous software programs are available for young learners. In this study, we…

The authors examine the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP; 2008) report from two complementary vantage points: (a) the historical tradition of research syntheses in reading research, beginning with Chall and extending through the NELP report, and (b) other recent attempts to examine or synthesize early reading development. While acknowledging…

Building crucial bridges between theory, research, and practice, this volume brings together leading authorities on the literacy development of young children. The "Handbook" examines the full range of factors that shape learning in and out of the classroom, from basic developmental processes to family and sociocultural contexts,…

Early childhood education (PK-2) has become a site of increasing accountability, with the attempt to normalize instruction through "scientifically based" reading programs. The use of authentic children's literature for early literacy instruction is often pushed aside in lieu of highly scripted commercial programs. As early childhood teacher…

Broadly, the current study contributes to the growing body of evidence supporting the positive effects of PA (phonological awareness) interventions for preschoolers, demonstrating that PA instruction need not be postponed until kindergarten. Specifically, the current study addresses the paucity of research on PA training in preschool by testing…

Critical lessons that share a transactional view of early literacy development are synthesized. A transactional view of reading and writing means that literacy as a meaning construction process, and that within a given literacy event, both the text and the reader are changed.

Examines the metacognitive reading strategies of five children, four to six years of age, who were reading fluently prior to grade one. States that fluency was judged on whether the children could conduct meaningful reading with relative smoothness. Suggests that each of the children used a variety of metacognitive reading strategies and showed…

Examines current research concerning various instructional approaches for introducing print related concepts to preschool children. Discusses the nature of preschool literacy skills in light of research findings. Concludes that a whole language approach enhances initial print concepts and develops analytical reading related skills. (MM)

Reports results of a three-year longitudinal study exploring the evolution of young children's ideas about reading. Finds that there was only moderate consistency in the ages at which concepts emerged and that the sequence of conceptual development was quite uniform across these children. (SR)

It is argued that attention to effective evidence-based early reading interventions are a co-requisite to genuinely inclusive education, with implications not only for reading acquisition, but also for a range of other social and academic domains. This paper briefly describes some of the recent developments in reading research that have the…

A case study documented the emergence of literacy in an extremely precocious reader between the ages of 2 years, 7 months and 3 years, 2 months. The case study examined the relation between the subject's oral language and reading development; the bases of his word identification; the relation between his reading and writing development; and…

A study examined the types of reading strategies emergent readers used as they read to make sense of the text. In addition to data obtained for the children's oral readings, a reading strategy classification scheme, Strategy Type Strategy Behavior (STSB), was employed to identify the types of strategies the children were using on this task.…