The implementation of effective instructional materials, such as a core reading program, by a qualified teacher is an important part of improving students' reading achievement. But selecting those instructional materials can be time-consuming. Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Southeast created this rubric for evaluating reading/language arts…

Uses exploratory data analysis to examine changes in individual reading and spelling patterns during first grade. Notes that subjects received 45 minutes of daily letter-sound instruction. Finds that spelling and reading responses progressed from nonphonetic, to phonetic, to correct. Finds also that those slow to improve in phoneme deletion were…

A year-long study examined how phonics or whole word instruction affected first graders' progress in reading and spelling words. Subjects, 80 Houston, Texas students of average reading and intellectual abilities from three classrooms receiving phonics instruction and three classrooms receiving whole word instruction, were administered a phonemic…

Comparison of 80 beginning first graders, half receiving phonics instruction and half receiving whole word instruction, found, for both groups, those above grade level in reading excelled in phonological recoding and application of grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules while those below grade level applied visual-orthographic knowledge more than…

Investigating how good and poor readers process words, a study examined the spelling and reading processes of 80 middle-class first grade students from three schools in Houston, Texas, 40 who were receiving whole word instruction, and 40 receiving phonics instruction. Based on scores from the Gates-McGinitie Reading Test, Basic R (administered in…