A few studies have indicated that dynamic measures of phonological awareness may contribute uniquely to the prediction of early reading development. However, standard control measures have been few and limited by floor effects, thus limiting their predictive value. The purpose of the present study was to examine the predictive value of a dynamic…

This study investigates the effects and feasibility of an intervention for first-grade students at risk for reading difficulties or disabilities (RD). The intervention was provided by general education classroom teachers and consisted of 15 min whole-class comprehension lessons (Tier 1) and 30 min Tier 2 intervention sessions in word reading,…

Early reading acquisition skills have been linked to verbal short-term memory (STM) capacity. However, the nature of this relationship remains controversial because verbal STM, like reading acquisition, depends on the complexity of underlying phonological processing skills. This longitudinal study addressed the relation between STM and reading…

The current study was completed through a retrospective analysis of school records of elementary school students in the Northeast Region of the Philadelphia School District (PSD) who have participated in the Fast ForWord (FFW) Language program. The data requested from student records included: demographic information (e.g., gender, grade, age,…

Parent tutoring offers potential as a means for assisting the large percentage of students who need to improve their reading skills. The primary purpose of this study was to examine the impact of a reading fluency intervention program when used by parents in the home during the summer months. Specifically, this study evaluated the effects of the…

In the present study we examined the processing demands of three reading comprehension tests, namely the Woodcock-Johnson Passage Comprehension (WJPC), a Curriculum-Based Measure test (CBM-Maze), and a Recall test, in the early elementary years. Our investigation was theoretically motivated by Perfetti's Verbal Efficiency Theory and examined the…

Entry-level kindergartners in classrooms from five middle class school districts were given a test of letter identification and children who scored at or below the 30th percentile on the test were classified as "at risk" for early reading difficulties. Half of these children were randomly assigned to a project-based intervention condition where…

This study utilized early reading assessment data from a randomized trial of 210 urban and rural schools in Texas to examine contextual effects on risk prediction in first and second grade. The primary objective was to examine the roles of (a) individual differences, (b) the grade 1 classroom, and (c) the pairing of first and second grade teachers…

Apart from the annual returns to the Ministry of Education of Reading Recovery (RR) data (and to a lesser extent, the four-yearly National Education Monitoring Project cycle data), there is currently no national data sets of reading achievement information for New Zealand primary school children. This article uses the national RR data for 2002 as…