Purpose: Reading and writing are foundational skills that provide access to educational, vocational, and social experiences. However, while the gap widens between the literacy skills of individuals with intellectual disability (ID) and those with typical development as they grow into adolescence, little is known about meeting the comprehensive…

Background/Context: Literacy stands as a pivotal life skill, especially as it strengthens education across subjects. The elementary years are crucial for mastering literacy, yet national assessments show a decline in elementary students' reading proficiency, with only 33% of American fourth graders reading at grade level (National Center for…

Inferencing skills uniquely contribute to the reading comprehension skills of older grade-school and college students. Evidence also suggests that children's reading component skills, such as decoding and language comprehension, differentially contribute to various reading comprehension assessments. However, additional research is needed to…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine if group differences exist in spelling accuracy or spelling errors between kindergarten children with hearing loss and children with normal hearing loss. Method: Participants included 23 kindergarten children with hearing loss and 21 children with normal hearing. All children used spoken English…

This research examines the effects of a computer reading program as a supplement to classroom instruction for Kindergarten students across Study 1 and Study 2 (N = 55 and 88, respectively). Students attended schools in suburban settings and all students received their typical balanced literacy programming. Students in the treatment condition used…

Numerous studies on reading comprehension with monolingual children have shown that oral language, such as vocabulary, is an important factor in predicting reading comprehension success. However, few studies have looked at the reading comprehension performance of bilinguals, and less is known about the contributors to its success, linguistic or…

Spelling analyses can be used to investigate sources of linguistic knowledge underlying children's literacy development and may be useful in predicting later achievement. This study explored the utility of six analysis metrics in predicting the spelling achievement of school-aged children with literacy learning difficulties via post-hoc analyses…

This study examines the efficacy, cost, and implementation of an integrated science and literacy curriculum for kindergarten. The study was conducted in a large urban district and included 1,589 students in 71 classrooms in 21 schools. The research includes a multi-site cluster-randomized controlled trial and mixed-methods cost and implementation…

Classroom-level influences on literacy skills in kindergarten through Grade 2, and on literacy and numeracy skills in Grades 3, 5, 7, and 9, were examined by comparing the similarity of twins who shared or did not share classrooms with each other. We analyzed two samples using structural equation modeling adapted for twin data. The first, Study 1,…

The overlapping waves model put forth by Robert Siegler emphasizes variability, adaptive choice, and gradual change in children's problem solving. These concepts were applied to emergent reading of an alphabet book with pages of three difficulty levels. Ninety-one kindergartners completed tests of emergent literacy. Twice, about 12 weeks apart,…

This empirical study explored the home environment literacy practices of young Latino English learners and their families. The participants were 217 incoming Kindergarten Latino EL students and parents. The data collection included a completed HLEQ by the parents. In addition, children were administered the PPVT, the preLAS, the PALS-K screening,…

This study aimed to describe home literacy (HL) activities of Spanish-/English-speaking children of low-socioeconomic status backgrounds and examine the relationship between HL and performance on standardized assessments. Parents of 65 dual-language learners (DLLs) in kindergarten completed an HL questionnaire. Parents reported an average of 17…

Helping young children become proficient readers is a critical goal. Research tells us that students who experience difficulty reading in the early years of school often struggle to catch up (Stanley, Petscher, & Catts, 2018; Ozernov, Palchik et al., 2016; Cunningham & Stanovich, 1997; Francis, Shaywitz, Stuebing, Shaywitz, & Fletcher,…

States are increasingly recommending that districts and schools use multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) to improve reading outcomes for all students. States have also suggested MTSS is a viable service delivery model in response to new state legislation to screen, identify, and treat students with word-level reading disability (i.e., dyslexia).…

This study aimed to describe home literacy (HL) activities of Spanish-/English-speaking children of low-socioeconomic status backgrounds and examine the relationship between HL and performance on standardized assessments. Parents of 65 dual-language learners (DLLs) in kindergarten completed an HL questionnaire. Parents reported an average of 17…