There are 26 letters in the English language. These letters, in various combinations, represent the 44 sounds in the language. Teaching students the basic letter-sound combinations gives them access to sounding out approximately 84% of the words in English print. There needs to be equal amounts of time need to be spent on teaching the meanings of…

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,…

There is a considerable and growing body of research investigating reading development in children with Down syndrome. However, there appears to be a common gap between the research evidence and instructional practices. It has been argued that teachers have insufficient information to enable them to implement effective literacy instruction with…

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…

"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…

During the first year of the program, 27 individual projects enrolling approximately 20,000 first-grade pupils were involved. Fifteen of these projects participated in a second-grade followup study. Some conclusions based on an analysis of data are (1) that prereading knowledge of letter names is the best single predictor of reading achievement in…

Explores how the preschool child identifies distortions which are similar to hand-drawn letters, and accounts for children's performance in recognizing such forms. (RB)

Purpose: Some researchers (F. R. Vellutino, F. M. Scanlon, & M. S. Tanzman, 1994) have argued that the different domains comprising language (e.g., phonology, semantics, and grammar) may influence reading development in a differential manner and at different developmental periods. The purpose of this study was to examine proposed causal…

Demonstrates that discrimination training with verbal materials (words and letters) is generally more helpful than training with non-verbal forms. (RB)

Investigates letter discrimination training and its transfer to a trigram recognition task. (RB)

This study, using the Visual Pattern Recognition Test for Prereading Skills, found that beginning readers improve in word recognition if they are given training in identifying essential components of letters. (HOD)

The premise of this book is that parents should help their child learn to read at home in order to individualize reading skill instruction better than may be possible at school alone. A reading readiness checklist is offered as a guide to determining if one's child is linguistically, behaviorally, and perceptually ready to begin to learn to read.…

This working paper presents the background, justification, and development plan for a kindergarten program to identify and correct deficits in prereading skills. The program provides for individual differences in: (a) patterns of skill deficits, (b) rates of learning, and (c) degrees of assistance required. It is intended for optimal use in the…

In a follow-up study, it was found that children with good early phonological awareness had well-developed lexical and sublexical reading and spelling procedures. Results suggest that early phonological skills relate more strongly to the development of sublexical than lexical processing systems. (Author/LB)