Purpose: To examine the ability to discriminate phonemic length and the association of this ability with reading accuracy, reading speed, and spelling accuracy in Finnish children throughout Grades 1-3. Method: Reading-disabled (RDFR, n = 35) and typically reading children (TRFR, n = 69) with family risk for dyslexia and typically reading control…

Bringing together leading scholars, this book describes proven ways to enhance early literacy skills in 3- and 4-year-olds, especially those from low-income families. Presented are scientifically based methods and approaches that are being applied in Early Reading First programs around the country. Important topics include promoting oral language…

Organized around 10 key areas for teaching and learning literacy--phonemic awareness, phonics, reading fluency, vocabulary, story comprehension, comprehension of informational text, questioning for understanding, discussion for understanding, narrative writing, and writing to learn--"Promoting Literacy Development" offers 50 clearly written,…

Developing spelling skills in English is a particularly demanding task for Chinese speakers because, unlike many other bilinguals learning English as a second language, they must learn two languages with different orthography as well as phonology. To disentangle socioeconomic and pedagogical factors from the underlying cognitive-linguistic…

Children with weak oral language skills are at risk of experiencing difficulty with early literacy acquisition. Intensive small group intervention during the pre-primary year has the potential to improve children's success in developing emergent literacy skills. Education assistants are a potentially powerful resource for supporting students at…

The influential report "Teaching Children to Read: An Evidenced-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction," published by the National Reading Panel in 2000, presented recommendations for daily literacy instruction in five key areas: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency,…

This article summarizes the results of a study involving 42 educational diagnosticians from North Texas. The study was conducted to determine diagnosticians' perceived understanding of early literacy development and their ability to effectively choose and interpret assessments of phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and reading fluency. The…

This study investigated the effectiveness of an integrated phonological awareness approach for children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). Change in speech, phonological awareness, letter knowledge, word decoding, and spelling skills were examined. A controlled multiple single-subject design was employed. Twelve children aged 4-7 years with…

The assessment of phonological awareness (PA) can serve several purposes, including providing a useful diagnostic function in the management of low-progress readers. This paper discusses various aspects of phonological awareness that have implications for literacy teaching at three different points in children's school career: the point of school…

Attentional control was investigated as a possible third component of reading comprehension, along with decoding and language comprehension, within the Simple View of reading (Gough & Tunmer "RASE: Remedial and Special Education" 7:6-10, 1986; Hoover & Gough "Reading and Writing" 2:127-160, 1990). Attentional control is the ability to suppress…

A portion of the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 2004), Response to Intervention (RtI), aims to prevent unnecessary student placement in special education. The intent of RtI is to provide all students with effective classroom instruction first and afford low-performing students with increasingly…

Technical adequacy and information/cost return were examined for four early reading measures: the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS), STAR Early Literacy (SEL), Group Reading Assessment and Diagnostic Evaluation (GRADE), and the Texas Primary Reading Inventory (TPRI). All four assessments were administered to the same…

Jacob, Bart, and Carl are children with intellectual disabilities (ID; i.e., mental retardation) who experience significant difficulty in learning to read. In the past, most research about reading methods for students with ID focused on teaching students to memorize sight words, a method that is clearly effective. Memorization of sight words is…

The purpose of the present research is to examine which of the two factors: (1) the iconic-semiotic factor; or (2) the human-phonetic factor is more relevant in explaining the appearance and distribution of the hand shape B-bent in Israeli Sign Language (ISL). The B-bent shape has been the subject of much attention in sign language research…

In the present study, we investigated the relationship between general auditory processing, Chinese tone processing, English phonemic processing and English reading skill in a group of Chinese-English bilingual children with a tonal L1 and Korean-English counterparts with a non-tonal L1. We found that general auditory processing contributed to…