Response-to-intervention (RTI) as applied in several California school districts was investigated by analyzing responses to questionnaires completed by 190 school psychologists representing 142 school districts. This analysis targeted the depth and breadth of RTI in these public K-12 school districts. A majority (80.7%) of the respondents…

The study examined whether preschoolers who were exposed to a media-rich literacy curriculum had better early reading skills than preschoolers who were exposed to a media-rich science curriculum. The study randomly assigned 80 preschool classes to incorporate either a media-rich literacy curriculum or a media-rich science curriculum. The final…

Building crucial bridges between theory, research, and practice, this volume brings together leading authorities on the literacy development of young children. The "Handbook" examines the full range of factors that shape learning in and out of the classroom, from basic developmental processes to family and sociocultural contexts,…

A theory-based approach was used to investigate the relations among Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF) initial skill status in the fall of first grade, NWF growth across the school year, and end-of-year oral reading fluency and reading comprehension (RC) skill. Hypotheses were anchored to Perfetti's verbal efficiency theory and the role of automaticity…

This article explores aspects of early language and literacy that may predict later literacy development. It explores a range of assessment procedures used for oral language, vocabulary, sentence structure and phonology and early reading and writing. The article then describes a small-scale study which highlights the disconnections between the…

This study examined the effectiveness of two tiers of intervention for preventing early reading difficulties among kindergarten children who qualified as at risk of experiencing difficulty in the early stages of learning to read. Participating schools were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions: Professional Development for…

The "Foundations" (English/language arts, mathematics, social emotional skills, approaches to play and learning, science, social studies, creative arts, and physical health and growth) are Indiana's early learning development framework and are aligned to the 2014 Indiana Academic Standards. This framework provides core elements that…

This study attempted to provide a systematic framework for phonics instruction for beginning readers in literature-based classrooms based on relative frequency of phoneme-grapheme occurrences found in three distinct corpora. The first corpus contained an academic word list. The second corpus contained the running text from 363 books identified as…

This study reports the construction of the Dialogic Reading Inventory (DRI), a tool for assessing a parent and child's storybook reading behaviors. Twenty-three parent-child dyads participated in the study. The Adult-Child Interactive Reading Inventory (DeBruin-Parecki, 1999) items were grouped into four categories and revised to reflect current…

This study investigated preschool teachers' beliefs and practices regarding the use of computer technology in teaching reading and writing in Jordan. The researcher developed a questionnaire consisting of two scales--Teachers' Beliefs Scale (TB Scale) and Teachers' Practices Scale (TP Scale)--to examine the role of computer technology in teaching…

The purpose of this correlational study was twofold: to examine the relationship of students' reading performance on six different diagnostic reading assessments and the third grade Ohio Reading Achievement Test; and to assist educators in choosing the diagnostic assessments that best identify students at risk of failing the third grade Ohio…

Undergraduate students at a teacher education institution, the University of Northern Colorado, are the target audience for an exhibit of a reading series from the Libraries' Archival Services collections. The display highlights an important era in the university's history involving four faculty members: Paul McKee, M. Lucile Harrison, Annie…

A sample of 83 kindergarten teachers participated in this study to examine their knowledge, skills, and classroom practices concerning phonological awareness. Analyses of data revealed significant gaps between knowledge and practice, knowledge and skills, and skills and practice. The gap between knowledge and skills, on one hand, and classroom…

Children start asking questions as soon as they speak their first sentences. And they continue to ask them at home and in the classroom if adults let them. Mosaic of Thought (Keene and Zimmermann 2007) has provided the author with a "field guide" to both her son's questions at home and her second-grade students' questions in the classroom. Keene…

What is environmental print? It is symbols all around. Environmental print is on signs, billboards, packages, junk mail, and everywhere. Young children easily recognize environmental print in their surroundings. Their everyday experiences with print are an important classroom tool to help children connect what they already know about written…