Suggests that children should learn to read by creating their own spellings for familiar words. (NH)

Describes factors influencing early literacy development, the key role of parental expectations and priorities, and the interventions that occupational therapists can use in working with children with physical disabilities. (Contains 60 references.) (SK)

Describes how to select and implement the right technology for an early childhood literacy program. (PKP)

This study contrasts the validity of 2 early reading curriculum-based measurement (CBM) measures: word identification fluency and nonsense word fluency. At-risk children (n = 151) were assessed (a) on criterion reading measures in the fall and spring of first grade and (b) on the 2 CBM measures each week for 7 weeks and twice weekly for an…

To reach the national goal that all children in the United States will read at an appropriate level by the end of third grade, the Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement (CIERA) has studied the reading growth of children in preschool and primary classes, both in and out of school. Our framework suggests that children need to…

Little is known about the underlying causes and developmental patterns of stability and change in early reading abilities. In a longitudinal study of twins (n=4,291 pairs), individual differences in reading achievement assessed by teachers using U.K. National Curriculum (NC) criteria showed substantial heritabilities at ages 7, 9, and 10 years…

Beginning reading software programs may be one way to provide at-risk readers the additional instruction and practice they need to attain grade-level expectations. Criteria such as interface design, instructional design, and beginning reading content (phonological awareness and alphabetic understanding) are all important considerations when…

Letter sound knowledge, which, together with phonological awareness, is highly predictive of pre-school children's reading acquisition, derives from children's knowledge of their associated letter names and the phonological patterns of those names. In this study of 66 monolingual pre-school children we examined whether phonological patterns…

To understand difficulties in early literacy most research has focused on print related knowledge. Knowing about print, however, is only one aspect of reading and may neglect how successful early readers also develop capacities to enter the text world and make sense of it through a personal, relational experience. To explore this other aspect of…

In this article, the authors report achievement outcomes of a multisite cluster randomized field trial of Open Court Reading 2005 (OCR), a K-6 literacy curriculum published by SRA/McGraw-Hill. The participants are 49 first-grade through fifth-grade classrooms from predominantly minority and poor contexts across the nation. Blocking by grade level…

The aim of this study was to determine whether explicit instruction in phonemic awareness and phonemically based decoding skills would be an effective intervention strategy for children with early reading difficulties in a whole language instructional environment. Twenty-four 6- and 7-year-old struggling readers were randomly assigned to an…

"Ready, Set, Leap!"[R] is a preschool curriculum that focuses on early reading skills, such as phonemic awareness, letter knowledge, and letter-sound correspondence, using multisensory technology that incorporates touch, sight, and sound. Teachers may adopt either a theme-based or a literature-based teaching approach, and for each…

This study determined the effectiveness of Kindergarten Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (K-PALS) for English Learners (ELs). We compared 20 K-PALS ELs to 20 Control ELs and to 20 K-PALS non-ELs on early reading skill acquisition, using a pretest-posttest control group design with matched samples. We also compared proportions of ELs unresponsive…

A synthesis of the extant research on extensive early reading interventions for students with reading difficulties and disabilities is provided. Findings from 18 studies published between 1995 and 2005 revealed positive outcomes for students participating in extensive interventions. Results indicated higher effects for studies providing…

The purpose of this paper is to show how curricular quality is related to the day-to-day activities experienced by children and the pedagogical activities of staff, both coded through systematic target-child observations. Data were drawn from the Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) and the Researching Effective Pedagogy in the Early…