Abolishing direct-instruction and skill-practice opportunities could have serious consequences for special-needs learners. Teachers should provide explicit and focused, even isolated instruction as needed and integrate it into the larger literacy context. This means conducting ongoing assessments of each student's abilities, skills, and progress…

This article describes PHAST (for Phonological and Strategy Training), a research-based remedial reading program that focuses on the primary obstacles to word identification learning and independent decoding that most students with reading disabilities face and the steps necessary to help these children achieve independent reading skills.…

This discussion of the sources of "Reading Recovery" presents the results of an investigation into whether or not this relatively costly, tutoring remedial reading program, designed for primary-grade students, is based on relevant experimental evidence as to how these students best learn to read. The general finding of the study was that Reading…

This report discusses how reading instruction should be modified to facilitate the development of comprehension strategies in all children (including those labeled as "at-risk" or "disadvantaged"). Current theoretical views of reading comprehension do not support a discrete skills perspective, but classroom research has…

The purpose of this study was to compare children's acquisition and use of reading strategies and their evolving stance toward reading in two instructional settings, skills-based and whole language. The authors used test-score and descriptive data to select case study children who represented a range of reading development, e.g., from emergent…