Students who display reading difficulties/disabilities at the end of third grade are less likely to succeed in content areas and graduate from high school than their reading-proficient peers. Literature suggests that students in rural school districts lag behind their suburban peers in terms of their reading levels and accessibility to resources.…

The Read to be Ready campaign emerged from the startling reality of Tennessee's reading achievement data. Only one-third of Tennessee fourth graders scored proficient in the last administration of National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) in 2015. Equally concerning, students who fell behind in the early years almost never caught up in…

This program evaluation is a study of the effectiveness of a core reading program, Journeys, by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), on the early literacy skills and oral reading fluency (ORF) of kindergarten through second grade students in a rural elementary school. The scores of the students in the experimental group were compared to scores of…

Examined in this study was instruction in two reading intervention programs, Reading Recovery and Reading Mastery, in the context of a statewide early reading initiative's first year of implementation. Through observations of 15 teachers, investigated in this study was the instructional focus of the intervention lessons and the extent to which…

Parent tutoring offers potential as a means for assisting the large percentage of students who need to improve their reading skills. The primary purpose of this study was to examine the impact of a reading fluency intervention program when used by parents in the home during the summer months. Specifically, this study evaluated the effects of the…

The America Reads Challenge Act of 1997 created a nationwide effort to meet President Clinton's challenge for American citizens to volunteer as reading tutors "to ensure that every American child...learns to read well and independently by the end of third grade" (USDOE, 1997). Research has shown that volunteer tutors can be effective in…

A study of 46 first-grade children to determine how basal instructed and language experience instructed children would differ in their use of written language cues revealed no significant differences between the two groups in their use of these cues. (TJ)

Start Making a Reader Today (SMART) is a book and reading program for children in kindergarten through second grade in 13 Oregon counties. The program aims to create a relaxed and safe environment in which children can practice their skills, one-on-one, with caring adult volunteers. A volunteer tutor recounts her experiences with the program. (SAS)

This document was prepared to provide guidance to "Reading First" coaches and teachers regarding alternative lesson structures for providing small group, differentiated instruction to students in grades K-3 within "Reading First" schools in Florida. The motivation for the development of this document stemmed from specific…

This study investigated developmental trends of certain oral-reading skills for first-, second-, and third-grade children instructed under the Distar Reading Program and the Holt Basic Reading System. The oral-reading skills studied were the overall speed and the accuracy of reading words spelled regularly and irregularly. Ten subjects comprised…

The first volume of an elementary curriculum guide prepared by the Summer Workshop Reading Committee of the Rochester Public Schools in Rochester, Minnesota, applies to kindergarten through grade 4. It is divided into the prereading level, the beginning reading level, and the independence level. Grade designations under each level suggest the…

Japanese and American reading programs in kindergarten and the primary grades differ extensively. This is partly because the Japanese written language makes initial learning easier and later learning more difficult. In addition, bolstered by a long history of literacy, Japanese parents provide more uniform support for their children's academic…

A study gauged the effects of peer tutoring on the reading skills of first graders. Subjects were 250 children divided into eight experimental and four control classrooms in a school district in Utah. Teachers were trained by researchers, bearing in mind five procedural principles: (1) appropriate modeling by the teacher, (2) extensive dialogue,…

Discusses an approach to early reading instruction that emphasizes "real" books and parental involvement. Contains a list of "dos" and "don'ts" for use by parents in helping their children read. (DF)

To compare the effect of remedial reading instruction over time on reading error patterns of at risk readers further classified as "learning disabled" (LD) with non-LD failing readers, a study examined 60 randomly selected children from a population of low achieving first graders in urban, suburban, and rural elementary schools…