Stagnant standardized test scores keep literacy achievement at the forefront of national education discussions. Increased conversations about the science of reading have propelled investigations into different types of phonics instruction. However, questions still linger such as "Which strategies are most effective for which students?",…

In-person tutoring has been shown to improve academic achievement. Though less well-researched, virtual tutoring has also shown a positive effect on achievement but has only been studied in grade five or above. We present findings from the first randomized controlled trial of virtual tutoring for young children (grades K-2). Students were assigned…

We examined the relations between working memory, emergent literacy skills (e.g., phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, rapid-automatized naming), word reading, and listening comprehension to online reading processes (eye movements), and their relations to reading comprehension. A total of 292 students were assessed on working memory and…

Decades of research in the science of reading suggest that using scientifically based reading practices that are aligned with the science of reading will help improve literacy. Literacy is a necessary skill and is critical for a child's overall development. How well children learn to read in school can impact their future success. This mixed…

Reading is a vital skill for functioning in society. People need to read road signs, prescription labels, restaurant menus, and job applications just to make it through everyday life. Unfortunately, approximately 20% of the population (Washburn, & Joshi, & Binks-Cantrell, 2011) are said to be dyslexic which means they will struggle…

Purpose: Researchers have developed a constellation model of decodingrelated reading disabilities (RD) to improve the RD risk determination. The model's hallmark is its inclusion of various RD indicators to determine RD risk. Classification methods such as logistic regression (LR) might be one way to determine RD risk within the constellation…

Background: Research has suggested that one of the most important variables for the development of reading comprehension is the home literacy environment, composed of the literacy interface and what is known as the limiting environment. The current study investigated Spanish children's reading comprehension in relation to these two dimensions.…

An abundance of research on early literacy intervention indicates that struggling, K-2 readers and writers can be effectively supported through the receipt of intervention services in school; however, research in the area has not yet addressed study of the unique, contextualized design and implementation of early literacy intervention in different…

An economics-driven discourse about early literacy (Trudell, 2009) in sub-Saharan African settings often includes a list of reasons for poor levels of literacy that remain mired in deficit thinking or a deficiencies model in which the problem lies within the non-literate people themselves. Meanwhile, the established post-colonial educational…

This report reviews and evaluates the tradition of assessing early literacy with formal tests. It begins with a historical account of the readiness movement, focusing on the development of formal measures of early literacy and tracing the development of the movement into the 1980s. Next, the paper analyzes in depth tests that are currently…

Contends that the methods used to measure literacy development of young British children lag behind understanding of how that literacy develops. Argues for new measures to assess children's early literacy, including their ways of responding to environmental print, sharing books and stories, and early writing. Discusses the placement of assessment…

"The Critical Word Factor," based on word recognition demands of texts, is a measure of text difficulty designed specifically for texts used by beginning readers. The measure is a function of the number of new, unique words per 100 running words of text that fall outside a designated curriculum. The authors investigated the validity of the…

This publication offers the 57th Yearbook of the National Reading Conference (NRC). This Yearbook begins with a preface and presents profiles of two awardees, John E. McEneaney and Scott G. Paris. Included in this Yearbook are the following papers: (1) The Education of African-American Students: Voicing the Debates, Controversies, and Solutions…