The science of reading (SoR) is a term used for a body of evidence encompassing multi-disciplinary research from education, cognitive psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience. This evidence points to six key constructs that contribute to proficient reading: oral language, phonological awareness including phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency,…

Grappling with difficult texts can make readers feel as though they're crashing a party that wasn't meant for them. They don't know the occasion. They don't know the guests. They have a hard time fitting in. In this article, Thomas Newkirk suggests several reasons why students find texts difficult to understand. Students may be…

This study explores how child and text clues were related to 31 kindergarteners' word-meaning derivation outcomes for 372 words presented in books read aloud to children. Data were analyzed using a multilevel, cross-classification, ordered logit model. Children showed no word-meaning derivation 40% of the time, indicating a need for instruction.…

Beginning readers' reading latencies increase as words become longer. This length effect is believed to be a marker of a serial reading process. We examined the effects of visual and phonological skills on the length effect. Participants were 184 second-grade children who read 3- to 5-letter words and nonwords. Results indicated that reading…

This practical, teacher-friendly book provides indispensable guidance for implementing research-based reading instruction that is responsive to students' diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Structured around the "big five" core topics of an effective reading program--phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension--the…

Integrating comprehension and vocabulary instruction in read-alouds can help teachers make the very most of class time. The curriculum described illustrates how read-alouds, when implemented with strategic purpose, can boost learners' vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. Specifically, the author presents guidelines for: (1) selecting…

As a result of the Reading First Program of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the view of reading has narrowed. Individual state's Reading First professional development programs, and hence reading teachers across the United States, have spent the six years since the funding of the program in 2002 focusing beginning and developmental reading on…

Suggests changes in the Guided Reading format based on recent research on the nature of reading and reading instruction. Emphasizes the dynamic process of constructing meaning from text. (MG)

The problems stated for this investigation were: (1) to determine the order of introduction of the common phoneme-grapheme correspondences needed for use in decoding of written words introduced in the elementary grades, and (2) to ascertain at what specific readability level a particular graphemic option occurred most frequently. A master word…

Techniques and procedures for teaching reading as a meaning-making, language-oriented process are the focus of this book. The underlying premise is that children are taught to read so that they have an important tool for developing and expanding concepts. In order to accomplish this aim, children must be exposed to the precision and ambiguities of…

This book was written primarily for the inservice elementary classroom teacher to assist in correcting the reading difficulties of the moderately disabled readers in the classroom. Five major divisions make up the book: (1) the various aspects of the reading process are discussed in the first section; (2) the second division describes many of the…

Reports findings of a study investigating the effects of three prereading activities--advance organizers, structured overviews/graphic organizers, and multivocabulary experiences--done both orally and in writing before a text reading assignment was given. (FL)

Early in the 20th century, educators began looking for scientific methods for matching texts with readers. Some of the best minds in education dedicated themselves to this task, including Edward L. Thorndike, William S. Gray, Ralph Tyler, Edgar Dale, Irving Lorge, and Jeanne S. Chall. The purpose of this book is to bring students of reading into…

This study was designed to investigate the differences in effectiveness in teaching sight words to kindergarten children by using words only (no-picture group), words and simple pictures (simple-picture group), and words and complex pictures (complex-picture group). The subjects were 30 kindergarten children selected from two kindergarten classes.…

Educators are now stressing that teaching students to be independent learners who learn to plan, structure and regulate their own learning activities, should be central to instruction. Studying word parts and origins has the potential for metacognitive instruction. Learning about the importance of context clues is also potentially metacognitive,…