Background: Despite evidence that synthetic phonics teaching has increased reading attainments, a sizable minority of children struggle to acquire phonics skills and teachers lack clear principles for deciding what types of "additional" support are most beneficial. Synthetic phonics teaches children to read using a decoding strategy to…

Matching phonemes (speech sounds) to graphemes (letters and letter combinations) is an important aspect of decoding (translating print to speech) and encoding (translating speech to print). Yet, many teacher candidates do not receive explicit training in phoneme-grapheme correspondence. Difficulty with accurate phoneme production and/or lack of…

Beginning readers in shallow orthographies acquire word reading skills more quickly than in deep orthographies like English. In addition to extending this evidence base by comparing reading acquisition in English with the more transparent German, we conducted a longitudinal study and investigated whether different early reading skills made…

A two-cohort cluster-randomized trial was conducted to estimate effects of small-group supplemental vocabulary instruction for at-risk kindergarten English learners (ELs). Connections students received explicit instruction in high-frequency decodable root words, and interactive book reading (IBR) students were taught the same words in a storybook…

A two-cohort cluster randomized trial was conducted to estimate effects of small-group supplemental vocabulary instruction for at-risk kindergarten English learners (ELs). "Connections" students received explicit instruction in high-frequency decodable root words, and interactive book reading (IBR) students were taught the same words in…

This randomized-control trial examined the learning of preservice teachers taking an initial Early Literacy course in an early childhood education program and of the kindergarten or first grade students they tutored in their field experience. Preservice teachers were randomly assigned to one of two tutoring programs: Book Buddies and Tutor…

The purpose of this varied replication study was to evaluate the effects of a supplemental reading intervention on the beginning reading performance of kindergarten students in a different geographical location and in a different instructional context from the initial randomized trial. A second purpose was to investigate whether students who…

The current study developed a taxonomy of reading skills and compared this taxonomy with skills being trained in 30 commercially available software programs designed to teach emergent literacy or literacy-specific skills for children in preschool, kindergarten, and Grade 1. Outcomes suggest that, although some skills are being trained in a…

This study compared the effects of 2 supplemental interventions on the beginning reading performance of kindergarteners identified as at risk of reading difficulty. Students (N = 206) were assigned randomly at the classroom level either to an explicit/systematic commercial program or to a school-designed practice intervention taught 30 min per day…

We examined whether the effect that different non-cognitive and cognitive factors have on reading acquisition varies as a function of orthographic consistency. Canadian (n = 77) and Greek (n = 95) children attending kindergarten were examined on general cognitive ability, phonological sensitivity, and letter knowledge. The parents of the children…

The experiment studied the differential effectiveness of two methods of blending instruction on the ability of prereaders to decode synthetic words. Findings indicated the superiority of auditory-visual training over auditory, with both methods significantly superior to practice on sound-letter association (the control group task). (RC)

A study examined whether children learn phonic decoding skills by reading without direct phonic instruction; compared the effects of a whole language first grade reading program with the effects of a traditional basal reading program; and determined whether there was a difference in decoding and comprehending abilities across levels of ability.…

Compares the ability of children at three different levels to use analogy in reading both real and nonsense words. Shows young children can successfully use analogy to decode new words. (HOD)

The relationship between speech and print is essentially asymmetrical and changes as the reading ability of the child improves. For the child who has succeeded at decoding, the asymmetry implies that commonalities between speech and print are more important than their differences. Three hypothetical observation points illustrate the similarity…

Using kindergarten subjects, a study examined whether prereaders learned better with visual cues while novice readers learned better with phonetic cues. (HOD)