This report contains 11 recommendations and a call to action designed to ensure that every child in Idaho is able to read at the appropriate level by the end of third grade. It was requested by the 1997 Idaho Legislature, which acknowledged that reading is fundamental to a student's ability to achieve his or her full potential. The research…

This 15-minute videotape describes the NewPhonics program, a developmentally appropriate program specifically for kindergarten and pre-first grade that fosters the skills necessary for early literacy learning. The video addresses the two necessary skills that children must possess to experience success in the early stages of literacy learning:…

Responding to a call to action by California's state leaders to make reading instruction in the early grades a top priority in the public schools, this booklet discusses California's new K-3 reading program. It begins with a discussion of what prompted this new focus on reading, and then discusses the four major elements of a balanced reading…

Taking into account what research says about getting all children off to a better start in becoming literate, this booklet discusses recent "cutting-edge" research in the area of reading and spelling acquisition, focusing on the practical implications. The first part of the booklet notes what happens in the homes of early readers,…

Phoneme awareness, or the ability to recognize a spoken word as a sequence of individual sounds, is thought to be an essential prerequisite to successful literacy. A child-based phoneme awareness training program integrating children's experience and activities with sound awareness and print immersion was developed at a small urban elementary…