This study addresses the effectiveness of a nationally used core reading program that reflects the research-based practices recommended by the National Reading Panel. This and other similar programs are increasingly used to prevent reading difficulties and ensure that all children are reading at or above grade level by the end of third grade. The…

This reader-friendly text examines the key foundational studies in early literacy. It addresses such essential questions as how research informs current practices and where the field still needs to go to provide the best learning opportunities for all children. Each chapter describes the methods and findings of one to five seminal studies,…

In research on the acquisition of reading, there have been cross-orthographic comparisons made between some alphabetic scripts and a few syllabic scripts. In the present study of Japanese Grade 1 children learning to read hiragana, a syllabic script, there was a comparison of assessments of oral word reading accuracy levels recorded by scorers…

This study evaluated the extent to which existing measures met standards for a continuous suite of general outcome measures (GOMs) assessing children's early literacy from preschool through early elementary school. The study assessed 316 children from age 3 years (2 years prekindergarten) through Grade 2, with 8 to 10 measures of language,…

During reading acquisition children learn to recognize orthographic stimuli and link them to phonology and semantics. The present study investigated neurocognitive processes of learning to read after one year of schooling. We aimed to elucidate the cognitive processes underlying neural tuning for print that has been shown to play an important role…

A one-group repeated-treatment design was used to examine the academic year and summer oral reading fluency outcomes for students attending a district-sponsored summer literacy program (N = 250). Piecewise growth models applied to longitudinal data obtained during the first and second grade and over the course of the intervening summer revealed…

This study examined technical characteristics of slopes produced from two general outcome measures (GOMs)--the Naming Spelling and the Dictating Spelling tests. A total of 305 first-graders in Taiwan participated in the study and underwent weekly assessments for 6 weeks. Six alternate forms were developed for each of the two measures to monitor…

The Report of the National Reading Panel (NICHD, 2000) identified five key elements that were critical to the development of reading, and these have been widely accepted by educational jurisdictions as providing definitive guidelines for early reading instruction. This paper presents a case for the inclusion of oral language and early literacy…

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…

The best way to teach children how to read has been debated for more than a century. Accumulating research now shows that there is no one best way to teach reading. The effect of various types of instruction depends on the constellation of skills learners bring to the classroom. In this article, we discuss the idea of…

This review focuses on interventions or practices designed to help children in kindergarten through third grade learn to develop skills that are considered foundational to developing solid reading abilities. The following research question guides this review: "Which instructional practices improve beginning readers' foundational reading…

Results of influential reports on early literacy have drawn attention to the need for early childhood educators to take up a more explicit, teacher-directed approach to beginning reading. Positive classroom results however are in part dependent upon teacher knowledge and this study investigated the relationship between early childhood educators'…

The Common Core set a standard for all children to read increasingly complex texts throughout schooling. The purpose of the present study was to explore text characteristics specifically in relation to early-grades text complexity. Three hundred fifty primary-grades texts were selected and digitized. Twenty-two text characteristics were identified…

Early comprehension is an important, but not well-understood, contribution to early literacy and language development. Specifically, research regarding the nature of skills representative of early comprehension, including how they contribute to later reading success, is needed to support best practices to adequately prepare students. This article…

Phoneme awareness, letter knowledge, and rapid automatized naming (RAN) are well-known kindergarten predictors of later word recognition skills, but it is not clear whether they predict developments in accuracy or speed, or both. The present longitudinal study of 172 Danish beginning readers found that speed of word recognition mainly developed…