Large-scale standardised, early reading assessments abound at the international and national levels, but research into urgent problems facing practitioners remains scarce. Practice-inspired research involves university-researchers in partnership with teacher-researchers undertaking high-quality research to provide relevant and useful knowledge. Case studies of practice-inspired research of students beginning to read in schools within complex, diverse communities provided unexpected findings as well as innovative practices. The first study investigated the connections between oral language and early reading and revealed that contrary to teachers' expectations, students' oral language did not map neatly to early reading development. Oral language was, however, important in its own right for learning in school. The second study investigated a large number of struggling readers in a school within a low-income community. This research found an urgent need for flexible, one-to-one, reading interventions for previously overlooked readers who fall into the third quartile within classrooms.