The ability to read is fundamental in determining an individual's academic success and social integration, and it is also known to have an impact on other cognitive abilities. A lack of foundational pre-reading skills can accumulate later, causing reading and learning problems. Early diagnosis and development of these skills are therefore…

This investigation explored the relationship between educator preparation programs and teachers' perceptions of instructional readiness in foundational literacy skills. This study also examined the impact that early childhood, elementary, and specialty endorsement education programs of study, reading methods courses, and clinical field experiences…

Grounded in the simple view of reading, this study tracked the development of print-processing skill in high-, average-, and low-achieving readers at six time points across grades 1-3. Results showed large between-group differences in sight vocabulary, oral reading accuracy, and oral reading rate that remained stable from beginning of first grade…

This reader-friendly text examines the key foundational studies in early literacy. It addresses such essential questions as how research informs current practices and where the field still needs to go to provide the best learning opportunities for all children. Each chapter describes the methods and findings of one to five seminal studies,…

Much of the research on curriculum-based measurement (CBM) in reading has focused on oral reading fluency (ORF). However, ORF is only one of five critical reading skill areas in the wider construct of reading that includes foundational skills such as phonological awareness and phonics. In this research brief, we address the construct of readiness…

State and local assessment data from 117 students in one school in the California Central Valley were examined to determine how much participation in a kindergarten through second grade multitiered reading intervention model contributed to third grade reading achievement, over and above the demographic factors of ethnicity, socioeconomic status,…

In the action research project report, the teacher researchers found that many kindergarten and first-grade students did not have the reading readiness skills to be reading at their benchmark target. The purpose of the project was to improve the students overall reading ability. The dates of the project began on September 8 through December 20,…

This study was designed to determine the contributions of metalinguistic skill and psycholinguistic processing ability to children's ability to detect the ambiguity of sentences and the relationship among all three factors to early reading ability. A total of 20 first graders and 20 second graders were given tasks testing the following abilities:…

Parents are their children's first and foremost important teachers. This paper presents some ways parents can help their children "get ready to read" during the ages of 2, 3, 4 and 5. This paper also offers several checklists for parents of kindergartners, first graders, second graders, and third graders.

The development of a research model to aid in the understanding of the hierarchical structure of reading readiness is described. Data were obtained by testing 218 first graders from three elementary schools with the Frostig Developmental Test of Visual Perception, the Gates Reading Readiness Test, the Metropolitan Readiness Test, the Olson Reading…

The Pre-Reading Skills Battery is a group-administered diagnostic battery measuring skills considered to be prerequisite to beginning reading instruction. Three major areas of skills are included: language, visual perception, and auditory perception. Within each of these three areas several skills are tested through two or three sub-tests. In some…

The effects of the use of traditional series readiness workbooks and subsequent delay in beginning reading instruction on reading achievement at the middle and end of first grade were investigated. Fifty-seven percent of the children in a suburban school district used traditional readiness workbooks and of the remaining 43%, some used non-series…

A number of criticisms have been made of currently available standardized pre-reading test materials in terms of their appropriateness for administration to urban children, their standardization, their content, and their required testing procedures. This new pre-reading skills battery has been designed as an urban oriented testing instrument to…

The major purposes of this study were (1) to determine if a listening comprehension test was as valid as a reading readiness test, a visual motor test, a group intelligence test, or an individual intelligence test in measuring the reading readiness of first grade pupils; and (2) to determine if a combination of two or more of these tests would…

The purpose of the study was to explore the possible effects of music activities, specifically singing and movement on certain reading test scores in beginning and pre readers in a Reading First school. Participants were 8 kindergarten and 17 first grade students (N=25) at a Reading First elementary school in an urban school district in the…