California and Texas mandate 75% to 80% decodable texts for first-grade reading programs, yet these percentages have no empirical base. This study examines the text selections in 6 first-grade programs from the perspective of lexical, semantic, and syntactic features. The composition of text differed across the 6 programs with respect to length,…

Reading words may take several forms. Readers may utilize decoding, analogizing, or predicting to read unfamiliar words. Readers read familiar words by accessing them in memory, called sight word reading. With practice, all words come to be read automatically by sight, which is the most efficient, unobtrusive way to read words in text. The process…

Thomson was the first of very few researchers to have studied oral reading errors as a means of addressing the question: Are dyslexic readers different to other readers? Using the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability and Goodman's taxonomy of oral reading errors, Thomson concluded that dyslexic readers are different, but he found that they do not…

The aim of this article is to illustrate how the teaching of thinking can be incorporated into regular teaching, using the teaching of reading as an example. It provides a brief overview of current understandings of the processes of learning to read and learning to think and then considers how noticing, naming, comparing, categorizing, connecting,…

This study examined the extent to which mora deletion (phonological analysis), nonword repetition (phonological memory), rapid automatized naming (RAN), and visual search abilities predict reading in Japanese kindergartners and first graders. Analogous abilities have been identified as important predictors of reading skills in alphabetic languages…

A large body of research evidence highlights the required conditions for children to become skilled readers. Within the past decade, research also has uncovered the fact that the origins of skilled reading begin to develop even before children start school. The intent of this article is to provide a brief summary of what is known about the…

Development of reading skills was examined in 4-year-old children from low-income homes attending a prekindergarten program. Fall to spring gains in letter identification were examined and compared with skills in phonological processing, rhyme detection, and environmental print, and with performance on a screening tool ("Get Ready to Read"). It…

This article is based on the presidential address I delivered at the 12th annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, held in June 2005 in Toronto. I trace the development of my interest in instructional research in, first, beginning reading and, more recently, in comprehension, and I describe studies designed to improve the…

This study provides descriptive data on the rates of office discipline referrals and beginning reading skills for students in grades K-3 for one school district that is implementing a three-tier prevention model for both reading and behavior support. Students in the district are provided a continuum of reading and/or behavioral support based on…

Precocious readers represent a small portion of children who enter school each year. Researchers have investigated the environmental characteristics, acquisition process, psycholinguistic and neuropsychological characteristics, and academic skills of these children. Despite the research findings in the area, researchers and clinicians are still…

Background: This study investigates the posited relationship between learning to read, and internalizing and externalizing problem behaviours, during the transition from preschool to primary school. Methods: A total of 196 (104 boys, 92 girls) children participating in the Jyvaskyla Entrance into Primary School (JEPS) study were followed up six…

This guide will help teach phonemic awareness to Pre K-3 students. It presents phonemic awareness as a sophisticated branch of phonological awareness through interactive activities that allows the student to succeed in learning the sounds represented by the letters of the alphabet. The book is designed to provide easy-to-follow suggestions for:…

Addressing beginning reading instruction in urban schools, this article proposes that a curriculum gap exists in many K-3 classrooms that operate under the guidelines of the No Child Left Behind Act and Reading First. The authors make a case for the inclusion of systematic and sustained instruction in comprehension, content knowledge, and writing…

Reading was, is, and always must come first in the early school years. Without a firm basis in reading, children are going to have a tough time in school and, later, in the world beyond the elementary school doors. Children need math and all the other wonderful things they are exposed to in school, but without some degree of success in reading,…

This article compares the development of print and braille reading in children who are blind and sighted in relation to Chall's stage model of reading development. Chall's model includes a prereading period, in which concepts are developed; middle stages, in which skills that are necessary for decoding text are developed; and later stages, which…