This study was an evaluation of a parent delivered, computer based beginning reading program with a group of 15 Kindergarten and Grade 1 students. Completing the "Funnix" program at home through a CD copy was expected to produce educationally and statistically significant improvements in phonemic awareness, letter-sound fluency, non-word…

In this highly informative text, Darrell Morris offers detailed, practical guidance based on decades of hands-on experience as a reading clinician and educator. He demonstrates how to conduct a comprehensive diagnostic assessment; interpret reading scores; and provide individualized instruction that takes each student's specific strengths and…

"ClassWide Peer Tutoring" ("CWPT") is a peer-assisted instructional strategy designed to be integrated with most existing reading curricula. This approach provides students with increased opportunities to practice reading skills by asking questions and receiving immediate feedback from a peer tutor. Pairs of students take turns…

Teaching students how to read is one of the most important tasks in elementary schools. The majority of schools use published basal programs to teach students to read. Several published reviews have indicated that past editions of basal readers did not align with appropriate instruction for beginning level readers. In this study I reviewed five of…

The "Auditory Discrimination in Depth (ADD) Program[R]" (currently called the "Lindamood Phonemic Sequencing (LiPS) Program[R]") is designed to teach students skills to successfully decode words and to identify individual sounds and blends in words. Initial activities engage students in discovering the lip, tongue, and mouth…

This article systematically reviews research on the achievement outcomes of four types of approaches to improving the beginning reading success of children in kindergarten and first grade: Reading curricula, instructional technology, instructional process programs, and combinations of curricula and instructional process. Study inclusion criteria…

The purpose of the study was to explore the possible effects of music activities, specifically singing and movement on certain reading test scores in beginning and pre readers in a Reading First school. Participants were 8 kindergarten and 17 first grade students (N=25) at a Reading First elementary school in an urban school district in the…

Among risk factors associated with reading difficulties, poverty and underdeveloped oral language skills can be particularly detrimental to reading success. The City Early Reading First (CERF) project implemented a comprehensive curriculum, professional development, intensive mentoring, and home supports to enhance children's language, literacy,…

What do first-grade teachers do and say to scaffold novice readers? To answer that question, this teacher researcher videotaped her own and others' scaffolding behaviors. Analysis of the video transcripts reveals valuable information that can support teachers or tutors as they work with beginning readers. Video data show how first-grade teachers…

In this article, we describe the development and evaluation of a beginning spelling intervention for young children at risk of reading disability. We first summarize the literature that supports beginning spelling as an ideal method for strategically integrating the beginning reading big ideas of phonemic awareness and alphabetic understanding. We…

Although "Corrective Reading Decoding" has been validated as effective over a wide range of students, there is a lack of information on its effectiveness with older students having intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Thus, the purpose of this investigation was to determine the effectiveness of "Corrective Reading…

The purpose of this study was to document teachers' use of and student responses to a set of early literacy texts designed as a school-home literacy project. Participants in this study were 23 children from six urban kindergarten classrooms and their kindergarten teachers; 11 with high letter identification at entry (HLID) and 12 with low letter…

"The Critical Word Factor," based on word recognition demands of texts, is a measure of text difficulty designed specifically for texts used by beginning readers. The measure is a function of the number of new, unique words per 100 running words of text that fall outside a designated curriculum. The authors investigated the validity of the…

New spellers, adults just beginning to learn to read and write, face daunting problems with English vocabulary. Teachers use varying approaches to help these students, including published lists of Words Most Frequently Used. This paper provides an inventory of words used in letters to syndicated columnist "Dear Abby" as published in a…