This article addresses the characteristics of learners in the emergent stage of literacy development and describes two instructional practices that facilitate the development of the alphabetic principle and concept of word in text.

This study investigates the impact of using an adaptive computer-assisted instruction (CAI) program in early childhood education. The Waterford Early Reading Program (ERP) is a CAI program that was assigned to kindergarten and first grade students in a school district in Texas for the 2015-2016 school year. The Texas Primary Reading Inventory…

Siegler's (1996) overlapping waves model of strategy development applied to reading posits that children use multiple strategies to read words from the earliest stage of reading development, that these strategies coexist over a long period of time, and that experience results in gradual change in the strategies children use and the…

This study examined the relations among features of the classroom physical literacy environment (book materials, literacy area and writing materials) and psychological literacy environment (instructional support), and preschool children's gains in two areas of emergent literacy over an academic year. Results showed that features of the physical…

This study examined the cognitive skills associated with early reading development when children were taught by different types of instruction. Seventy-nine children (mean age at pre-test 4;10 (0.22 S.D.) and post-test 5;03 (0.21 S.D.)) were taught to read either by an eclectic approach which included sight-word learning, guessing from context and…

We present a meta-analysis to test the validity of the Simple View of Reading Gough & Tunmer ("Remedial and Special Education," 7:6-10, "1986") for beginner readers of English and other, more transparent, orthographies. Our meta-analytic approach established that the relative influence of decoding and linguistic comprehension on reading…

The authors explored "Itchy's Alphabet" as an innovative approach to teaching letter-sound connections through multisensory cues. This is the initial demonstration of this instructional method for increasing students' sublexical skills (letter identification, letter-sound knowledge, and phonological awareness). To examine the effectiveness of the…

Teaching students the most frequent sounds of the alphabet letters is the first crucial step in good phonics instruction. But beginning letter and sound lessons, especially if poorly taught or too rapidly paced, can be overwhelming and confusing for some young children and struggling readers. How can we simplify the cognitive task for such…

More than one third of American children cannot read at a basic level by fourth grade (Lee, Grigg, & Donahue, 2007) and those numbers are even higher for African American, Hispanic and poor White students (Boorman et al., 2007). These are alarming statistics given that the ability to read is the most basic and fundamental skill for academic…

This study examined the influences of problem behaviors on kindergarten reading outcomes and investigated the extent to which explicit, code-based reading instruction moderated those relations among 206 children identified as being at risk of reading difficulty. Children from the classrooms of 57 kindergarten teachers in 12 schools were randomly…

Lexia Reading is a computerized reading program that provides phonics instruction and gives students independent practice in basic reading skills. Lexia Reading is designed to supplement regular classroom instruction. It is designed to support skill development in the five areas of reading instruction identified by the National Reading Panel. The…

Children (5 and 6 years old, n = 30) at familial risk of dyslexia received a home-based intervention that focused on phoneme awareness and letter knowledge in the year prior to formal reading instruction. The children were compared to a no-training at-risk control group (n = 27), which was selected a year earlier. After training, we found a small…

The setting of this study took place in an inner city. The purpose was to determine the effectiveness of a neurologically integrated approach in teaching 43 at-risk pre-first graders their letter sounds and formations during 45-50 hours of summer school. There were four sequential phases to teaching this alphabetic approach: imagery, auditory,…

This Spanish language workbook is intended to help elementary school children learn the Spanish alphabet. Each page presents a letter of the alphabet, a number of Spanish words beginning with that letter, and pen and ink drawings illustrating some of the words. The drawings are suitable for coloring. (AMH)

Background: Studies focusing on reading errors can help to understand how children learn to read and to structure key components of reading instruction. However, no prior studies have examined which letters might be a greater source of difficulty for beginning readers in Spanish. Aims: First, to examine the pattern of reading errors in beginning…