Prisons across the United States of America are faced with finding ways to reduce illiteracy rates across adult education. One strategy is to offer reading programs that are based on the science of reading. Thus, the purpose of this study was to determine if adults in treatment groups across five midwestern correctional institutions who received a…

We examined the efficacy of 20 weeks of individual supplemental phonics-based instruction for language minority (LM) and non-LM first graders. Students were designated LM if the primary home language was not English (otherwise non-LM). Those performing in the bottom half of their classroom LM/non-LM group in letter knowledge and phonological…

This study tested the efficacy of supplemental phonics instruction for 84 low-skilled language minority (LM) kindergarteners and 64 non-LM kindergarteners at 10 urban public schools. Paraeducators were trained to provide the 18-week (January-May) intervention. Students performing in the bottom half of their classroom language group (LM and non-LM)…

The purposes of this study were to replicate previous research on phonics-based tutoring in kindergarten and to compare treatment effects for students who received individual instruction compared to instruction in dyads. Thirty classroom teachers from 13 urban elementary schools referred at-risk students for participation. Students who met…

In this article, we report kindergarten student and teacher outcomes from a quasi-experimental evaluation of The Superkids, a systematic, phonics-based, comprehensive K-2 reading program. We recruited 23 kindergarten teachers to implement The Superkids program from a diverse, yet predominantly ethnic minority, group of classrooms from across the…

The purpose of this evaluation of Scholastic's "System 44" conducted by RMC Research was to expand the existing research on students with learning disabilities by conducting a randomized study of struggling readers with approximately half of the sample comprised of students with learning disabilities. Specifically, this evaluation…

This study reports a randomized controlled trial evaluation of a computer-based balanced literacy intervention, ABRACADABRA (http://grover.concordia.ca/abra/version1/abracadabra.html). Children (N = 144) in Grade 1 were exposed either to computer activities for word analysis, text comprehension, and fluency, alongside shared stories (experimental…

We examined the benefits of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) as a supplement to a phonics-based reading curriculum for kindergartners in an urban public school system. The CAI program provides systematic exercises in phonological awareness and letter-sound correspondences. Comparisons were made between children in classes receiving a sufficient…

Scholastic's "System 44" is a foundational reading program intended for older struggling readers who have not mastered basic phonics and decoding skills. Combining researched-based phonics instruction with adaptive technology, "System 44" is designed to improve students' word reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. The…

A total of 46 children in Grades 2 and 3 with low word-level skills were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 groups that received supplemental phonics-based reading instruction. One group received intervention October through March (21.5 hours), and one group served as a control from October through March and later received intervention March through May…

Explores the effectiveness of "word boxes" phonics instruction on beginning first-grade children's word identification and spelling performance. Finds that children in the word boxes condition significantly outperformed children in a more traditional phonics condition. Indicates that word boxes lessons can be a viable phonics approach to…

In Experiment 1, it was found that 5-year-old new school entrants taught by a synthetic phonics method had better reading, spelling and phonemic awareness than two groups taught analytic phonics. The synthetic phonics children were the only ones that could read by analogy, and they also showed better reading of irregular words and nonwords. For…

At-risk 1st graders were randomly assigned to tutoring in more or less decodable texts, and instruction in the same phonics program. The more decodable group (n = 39) read storybooks that were consistent with the phonics program. The less decodable group (n = 40) read storybooks written without phonetic control. During the first 30 lessons,…

Spanish-dominant bilingual students in grades 2-5 were tutored 3 times per week for 40 minutes over 10 weeks, using 2 English reading interventions. Tutoring took place from February through April of 1 school year. One, Read Well, combined systematic phonics instruction with practice in decodable text, and the other, a revised version of Read…

A study explored the effectiveness and feasibility of phonological awareness (PA) training with and without beginning decoding components for 25 kindergartners with disabilities in inclusive schools. Students with special needs participating in PA with beginning decoding instruction did better than those just receiving PA and controls. (Contains…