Little is known about the content and quality of reading instruction provided to students with intellectual disability. This study aimed to describe the reading instruction provided to students with intellectual disability who were not yet readers in self-contained elementary classrooms. The teachers of 24 classrooms participated in the study.…

In a test-driven educational environment, teachers see a great need for more engaging resources that produce the literacy results needed for students to thrive academically. In 2015, The National Assessment of Educational Progress reported that only 36% of fourth graders scored at or above the Proficient level of reading. This statistic was…

Reading is a skill that is necessary to be successful both academically and professionally in today's society. Thus, it is essential that educators work with students to develop their reading skills and help them become proficient readers (Otto, 2008). This study concurrently implemented a phonics-based reading intervention and a sight-word…

The quick adoption of iPads into the classroom, coupled with the many apps targeting early literacy skills, offers a new way to build early literacy skills with emergent and beginning readers. However, young children may be more proficient with the technology than with the literacy concepts, and may not be maximizing learning, or even learning at…

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a multicomponent early literacy curriculum that included phonics and phonemic awareness in comparison to a sight word approach. A total of 93 students with severe developmental disabilities who were enrolled in Grades K through 4 were randomly assigned to either a multicomponent early literacy curriculum…

Young children who are English language learners (ELLs) face major challenges in learning to read English. This study examined whether computer-assisted instruction (CAI) can be beneficial to ELL kindergartners enrolled in bilingual classes. The CAI programs provided systematic and structured exercises in developing phonological awareness and…

Jacob, Bart, and Carl are children with intellectual disabilities (ID; i.e., mental retardation) who experience significant difficulty in learning to read. In the past, most research about reading methods for students with ID focused on teaching students to memorize sight words, a method that is clearly effective. Memorization of sight words is…

A fiercely contested debate in teaching reading concerns the respective roles and merits of reading schemes and real books. Underpinning the controversy are different philosophies and beliefs about how children learn to read. However, to some extent debates have largely been rhetoric-driven, rather than research-driven. This article provides a…

The purpose of this study was to measure the effects of reading racetrack and flashcards when teaching phonics, sight words, and addition facts. The participants for the sight word and phonics portion of this study were two seven-year-old boys in the second grade. Both participants were diagnosed with a learning disability. The third participant…

Practitioners are increasingly expected to provide reading instruction to students with cognitive disabilities to help them become literate. Whereas a phonics-based approach to reading instruction is regarded as a "best practice" for most young children, its effectiveness for children with cognitive disabilities is unclear. The purpose of this…

Gives specific ideas for encouraging students to be flexible in their approach to decoding words. (MKM)

Evaluated was sequencing as a visual ability often deficient in dyslexic children through comparison of two methods of teaching reading with two third grade classes of girls. (DB)