A substantial number of students read significantly below grade level, and students with disabilities perform far below their non-disabled peers. Reading achievement data indicate that many students with and at-risk for reading disabilities require more intensive reading interventions. This chapter utilizes the theoretical model of the Simple View…

Decoding, building fluency, and exploring word and sentence meanings are important elements of literacy instruction in elementary classrooms. Shared literacy experiences provide opportunities for teachers to engage students in meaningful reading experiences. This article describes a quick four-step process for conducting close sentence reading, a…

For students to be able to read with greater fluency and comprehension, they must first develop their understanding of morphology, the knowledge of meaningful word parts in the language. To develop this understanding, students must learn the following: letter patterns and word parts, the relation of sounds to letters, and high-frequency word…

Because reading is not a natural process like language, young learners must be taught to read. Knowledge about how the reading brain develops has critical implications for understanding which teaching methods to use and helps reconceptualize previous debates. In this excerpt from "Reader Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World",…

Learning to read is an expectation rather than an exception in society today. Despite this, some children experience reading difficulties. The purpose of this article is to review recent and seminal research on reading difficulties through the lenses of three perspectives: cognitive, social and cultural and interactive. The three perspectives are…

Purpose: Reading involves the ability to decode and draw meaning from printed text. Reading skill profiles vary widely among learners with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). One fairly common pattern is relative strength in decoding combined with weak comprehension skills--indicators of this profile emerge as early as the preschool years. In order…

Purpose: Reading involves the ability to decode and draw meaning from printed text. Reading skill profiles vary widely among learners with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). One fairly common pattern is relative strength in decoding combined with weak comprehension skills--indicators of this profile emerge as early as the preschool years. In order…

Learning to read English is more difficult than in most other alphabetic languages. It sometimes seems there are not reliable rules for linking letters with sounds. Teaching students all of the letter patterns they may find in texts is no simple task. Students struggle processing the sounds in words, so even words with simple spellings are…

Children with language impairment (LI) are at an elevated risk for reading difficulties, particularly if their language difficulties are present at the time of formal schooling entry. Learning to read is heavily dependent on linguistic knowledge, specifically phonological knowledge for word decoding and language comprehension for reading…

Four scientifically validated approaches to fluency instruction (Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction, Wide Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction, Fluency-Oriented Oral Reading, and Wide Fluency-Oriented Oral Reading) are reviewed. Two for the whole class and two for small groups. Key components of fluency, automaticity, and prosody are defined,…

Current conversations about children's literacy have focused on the need for more phonics and decoding instruction and have sidelined the importance of children's language development, argues George Hruby. Language development involves more than the ability to decode written language. The ability to understand the meaning of those words is also…

Students with learning disabilities (LD) often face significant difficulties in reading. Research has found a variety of different evidence-based practices to support the reading development of students with LD in areas such as word work, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. However, these practices are most often intended for use in traditional…

Many adolescent students who are learning English and are identified with learning disabilities have difficulties with both reading comprehension and English language proficiency. In the secondary grades, these students have fewer opportunities to improve their reading comprehension and to learn from a range of disciplinary texts. To address these…

Letter-sound knowledge is a strong predictor of a student's ability to decode words. Approximately 50% of English words can be decoded by following a sound-symbol correspondence rule alone and an additional 36% are spelled with only one error. Many students with reading disabilities or who struggle to learn to read have difficulty with phonology,…

This report is part of a series of four guidance reports that the EEF has produced on the theme of language and literacy. It focuses on pupils between the ages of 5 and 7 in Key Stage 1. However, it may also be applicable to older pupils who have fallen behind their peers, or younger pupils who are making rapid progress. Separate reports cover…