This study explores the long-term effectiveness of two differing models of early intervention for children with reading difficulties: Reading Recovery and a specific phonological training. Approximately 400 children were pre-tested, 95 were assigned to Reading Recovery, 97 to Phonological Training and the remainder acted as controls. In the short…

Describes a five-year longitudinal study of "Reading Recovery," a program in the San Luis (California) Coastal Unified School District, providing tutoring for children struggling with beginning reading. Of 613 participating first graders, 513 successfully completed the program. "Graduates" reached average reading and writing…

This study describes the evolution of an exemplary Title I reading program in a rural elementary school. The key element in the program was a knowledgeable reading teacher who worked directly with children and also supervised the tutoring efforts of others (teacher assistants and community volunteers). A snapshot of longitudinal test data showed…

Part 1 describes a followup study of the effects of three types of beginning reading programs on reading achievement of second graders predicted by pretests as likely to have difficulty learning to read. Forty first-grade classrooms participated, 10 classes for each treatment. All treatment A classes received instruction using the basal program.…

Research suggests that reading is a written language process that is learned naturally in much the same way as oral language. To test this hypothesis, a descriptive, longitudinal study was conducted of the reading development of eight kindergarten and first grade students who showed environmental print awareness but were not considered readers.…

A 3-year study with 359 pupils compared individualized reading instruction with basal reading instruction. Twenty-eight first-grade classrooms were paired (individualized and basal), and teachers received prior instruction for working in the experiment. Pupils remained together in their various classes and treatment groups for the 3-year period,…

This study is a follow-up on a previous study of the effects of 2 beginning reading programs implemented in 1st grade. In the previous study, 40 1st-grade students who were matched based on their Concepts About Print Test (Clay, 1979) and Phonological Segmentation Fluency from the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS; Good…

To highlight the versatility of the Starter Approach to reading, a one-on-one beginning reading strategy for use with a nonreader of any age, this document describes the approach in detail and then briefly describes four longitudinal studies that used it. The introduction notes that the procedure combines successful components of popular,…

Examines a program in Denmark that uses metalinguistic games and exercises to stimulate preschool children's discovery of the phonological structure of language. Concludes that phonological awareness can be developed outside the context of the acquisition of an alphabetic writing system, and that this awareness facilitates subsequent reading and…