The present study investigated the relation among reading skills and attributions, naming speed, and phonological awareness across a wide range of reading skill. Participants were 1,105 school-age children and youths from two understudied populations: African Americans and Hispanic Americans. Individual assessments of children ranging in age from…

A systematic review of the literature related to instructional strategies to improve reading skills for students with intellectual disabilities was conducted. Studies reviewed were within three categories; early reading approaches, comprehensive approaches, and one method approach. It was concluded that students with intellectual disabilities are…

This program evaluation was undertaken to examine the relationship between participation in Project iRead and student gains in word recognition, fluency, and comprehension as measured by the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening (PALS) Test. Linear regressions compared the 2012-13 PALS results from 5,140 first and second grade students at…

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of three computerized interventions on the reading skills of children with reading disabilities in Grade 2. This longitudinal intervention study included five test sessions over 1 year. Two test points occur before the intervention, and three afterwards. The last follow-up was conducted 1…

The present study used two letter detection tasks, the classic missing letter effect paradigm and a single word versus familiar word compound version of this paradigm, to study bottom-up and top-down processes involved in reading in normally achieving as compared to low achieving elementary school readers. The research participants were children…

There is a growing literature demonstrating that speech rhythm sensitivity is related to children's reading development, independent of phonological awareness. However, the precise nature of this relationship is less well understood, and further research is warranted to investigate whether speech rhythm sensitivity predicts the different…

This paper reviews research on children's use of contextual cues in reading, and reports on a study which explored the contextual sensitivity and word recognition behavior of 108 beginning readers from grades 1, 2, and 3. (CM)

Two hundred and eight first graders were assigned to one of three treatment groups. Treatment A received initial instruction in letter names followed by sight words; treatment B received initial instruction in letter names and sounds followed by sight words; and treatment C received initial instruction in sight words followed by letter names and…

Fifteen regular grade 2 teachers used a set of 150 written lessons that were designed to develop, over the course of a school year, low and normally achieving students' ability to decode by analogy (i.e., to read unknown words using known words). The lessons provided (1) a planned sequence for teaching phonic elements including common spelling…

Discusses a study of the relationship of Australian elementary school students' word reading strategies to comprehension level, reading time, and phonemic awareness. Reports that performance in reading both irregular and nonsense words is a reasonably good predictor of subsequent performance. Recommends remedial training for students lacking…

Reports on two experiments that explore the comprehension difficulties of children with normal word recognition ability. Concludes that skilled readers engage in more constructive processing and that comprehension difficulties are not the result of a defective working memory. (SRT)

This review of 20 years of literature on sight word instruction for individuals with handicaps examines effectiveness data for procedures teaching word recognition and comprehension. Covered are "errorless procedures," prompt elimination, stimulus fading, time delay, easy to hard discrimination, and trial and error with feedback. Two tables…

The instruction provided by two beginning reading programs (the Ginn 720 and the Palo Alto 1973 reading programs) are analyzed and compared in this paper on the basis of such factors as phoneme-grapheme correspondence and phonics instruction, sight word learning, and the development of reading comprehension. The comparison focuses primarily on the…

A study examined how word recognition automaticity develops and its relationship to the acquisition of comprehension skill. Two different methods for teaching reading were used: (1) a global method using the Houghton Mifflin basal reading program, and (2) a code method using the New Reading System, which emphasizes word decoding skills along with…

Intended to help dispel several unsupported "myths" about reading instruction, this book analyzes a selected group of teaching practices that have been supported by reading experts but not by research findings. The "myths" discussed in the first 12 chapters of the book are as follows: (1) phonics hinders comprehension; (2) unpredictable spelling…