Web Version

Research Brief Activate Early Learning!

August 2004

Activate Early Learning!

Table of Contents

The Importance of Early Intervention ............................................................ 3 Oral Language Development ..................................................................... 3 Concepts About Print ................................................................................. 5 Phonemic Awareness .................................................................................. 6 Letter Knowledge ....................................................................................... 7 Summary ........................................................................................................... 8 References ......................................................................................................... 8

Activate Early Learning!

The Importance of Early Intervention

As children develop the cognitive capacity to acquire early reading skills, individual differences arise in their capacity to internalize and utilize the abilities that the research syntheses indicate are necessary for becoming a skilled reader (National Reading Panel, 2000; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). Developing this essential knowledge for children that are likely to fall behind before they actually do fall behind is critical to assuring every childs success. The importance of this measure of prevention cannot be underestimated. Snow, Tabors, Nicholson, and Kurland (1995) found that preschool emergent literacy skills were significantly correlated with first-grade reading achievement, suggesting the more pre-literate knowledge children bring to formal reading instruction the greater the likelihood there is for success. Students who have poorly developed emergent literacy skills are likely to have difficulty acquiring both decoding and reading comprehension skills and subsequently are likely to fall further and further behind their peers. This could result in exposure to fewer words over time, which would affect all aspects of reading achievement and vocabulary development (Allington, 1984). This cascading effect will continue to widen the gap between the skilled and unskilled readers (Stanovich, 1986) unless remedial intervention is provided. Without either prevention or subsequent intervention, this achievement gap will remain. Juel (1988) found that first-grade children who were classified as being in the bottom quartile of their class for reading skills had an 88% likelihood of remaining in the bottom quartile in the fourth grade. Moreover, this gap remains consistent through the secondary level as well. Seventy-five percent of the children who had reading difficulties in the third grade still had reading problems in the ninth grade, indicating that the disparity persists over time (Francis, Shaywitz, Stuebing, Shaywitz, & Fletcher, 1996; Shaywitz, Fletcher, Holahan, & Shaywitz, 1992). Without early intervention and prevention, children who are at risk of falling behind will

likely fall behind and remain behind. Children who have the potential to fall behind may need entirely different kinds of learning experiences that extend beyond traditional instruction. Current reading instructional practices may neither take into account the needs of diverse learners nor the learning environments these children may need to learn within in order to not fall behind (Chard & Kameenui, 2000). Kameenui (1993) states that the needs of diverse learners necessitate multiple perspectives and flexible approaches to accommodate the individual differences these children may possess and suggests that the learning histories of these children be taken into consideration within differing learning contexts. Fostering emergent literacy skills for at-risk learners has been shown to have a positive effect on these childrens future reading skills (Lesiak, 1997). The Activate Early Learning! program was created specifically to meet the diverse needs of children who have the potential to fall behind during the literacy learning process by providing preventive measures designed to be implemented at the preschool and kindergarten levels. The foundational skills taught through the Activate Early Learning! program will provide the basis for later reading achievement to be built upon and help to prevent later reading failure. Activate Early Learning! focuses on the key abilities of oral language development, concepts about print, phonemic awareness, and letter knowledge the importance of all of which has been established through scientific evidence.

Oral Language Development

The literacy process begins with oral language (Zhang & Alex, 1995). Most children arrive to kindergarten verbally fluent in their native language, and it is this capacity for oral language development that is crucial to later reading success (Chomsky, 1972). Hart and Risley (2003) found that gaps among childrens vocabulary knowledge due to differential levels of verbal exposure from birth onward persist over time. Without proper intervention, these children are placed at a clear disadvantage by their impoverished language

Research Brief

development when they begin the literacy learning process. However, despite initial deficiency, oral language capacity can be directly increased through quality verbal interactions with parents and especially with teachers during classroom instructional time (Bus & van IJzendoorn, 1995; Dickinson & Smith, 1991; Dickinson & Tabors, 1991; Neuman, 1996). Increased reading time and read-aloud lessons alone, however, are not sufficient enough to develop fluent reading alone (Meyer, Wardrop, Stahl, & Linn, 2001; Fielding-Barnsley & Purdie, 2003; Morrow & Gambrell, 2001) but have their benefit in developing childrens understanding of the written register (Bus, van IJzendoorn, & Pellegrini, 1995) and increasing vocabulary acquisition (Blachowicz & Fisher, 2000; Elley, 1989; Morrow & Gambrell, 2001). Neuman (1996) found that training caretakers to read to children more interactively with the intention of increasing the quality of linguistic exchanges during storybook reading had a significant impact on childrens ability to acquire other emergent literacy skills, such as concepts about print, letter naming, and phonemic awareness. Similarly, Dickinson and Smith (1994) found that quality linguistic exchange and analytical discussions during storybook reading had a strong association with vocabulary development and resulted in an increased usage of lowerfrequency words. Interactive or dialogic reading is even more important for struggling and at-risk readers. Fielding-Barnsley and Purdie (2003) found that children who were labeled as at risk benefited from dialogic reading in which instructors read with the children not to them. The instruction included asking questions, providing feedback, and eliciting the child to provide higher-level descriptions during storybook reading. When such instruction is implemented, the quality of childrens oral language interactions, including their expressive vocabulary, increases even for preschool children who have been labeled as 10 months behind the developmental standard (Whitehurst, Arnold, Epstein, & Angell, 1994).

The importance of skilled, decontextualized oral language becomes increasingly important as children move from the task of decoding to comprehension of text (Snow, et al., 1995). Encouraging extended discourse and narratives during storybook reading as well as enticing children to use their oral language skills more creatively can help to better prepare children for the task of text comprehension (Snow, 1991).

Concepts About Print

Knowledge about print conventions plays an important role in the development of emergent reading skills. These basic elements words and sentences read left to right and top to bottom, print that corresponds to speech, or print that can appear alone or with pictures develop gradually over time through multiple exposures and meaningful experiences with text (Lesiak, 1997). Very young children typically are exposed to such opportunities through print-rich home environments and sharedreading opportunities with parents. Providing children with specific experiences geared toward learning about print has been found to be an effective learning practice for even the youngest children (Hiebert, 1980). Aside from the obvious functionality such knowledge affords a child, print awareness has been found to be related to later reading achievement as well (Adams, 1993; Day & Day, 1984; Dickinson & Sprague, 2001). In a longitudinal study that monitored kindergartners school achievement over five years, Day and Day (1984) found that the level of print awareness in kindergarten is predictive of performance on standardized achievement tests even five years later. Though the findings of this study do not necessarily indicate that knowledge of print conventions causes increased reading achievement or that it is even necessary for learning to read, it does imply that it increases childrens readiness to learn word level skills (Hiebert, 1981; Reutzel, Oda, & Moore, 1989). Similarly, Heibert (1980) states that knowledge about print conventions is tied to the development of childrens logical reasoning skills, which have been shown to play a key role in reading readiness development.

Activate Early Learning!

Exposure to print seems to be the crucial element necessary to developing concepts about print. However, the level of exposure required is debatable. Stahl and Murray (1993) caution that children have to be engaged with print for this knowledge to develop. Passive exposure alone is insufficient. Despite this conclusion, Heibert (1980) states that just involving younger children in naturalistic reading experiences and exposing children to environmental print can increase their general awareness significantly. Regardless of how it is developed, the research literature agrees that it is beneficial to reading success, and therefore it may be a true precursor to learning to read (Lomax & McGee, 1987). Research has concluded that print awareness provides a foundation on which later reading skills, such as letter-sound knowledge, can develop (Lomax & McGee, 1987; Riley, 1996 [see Lomax article]; Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1982), and it can help motivate children to desire to learn to read (Lyon, 1998). However, as with any cognitive process, print awareness develops gradually over time and can overlap with the growth of other skills, yet it can still help children gain readiness for developing later concepts (Lomax & McGee, 1987).

readers will likely continue to struggle to learn how to read (Adams, 1990; Juel, 1988). Phonemic awareness has been found to be more than merely associated with growth in reading skill. Research has provided ample evidence that phonemic awareness is causally linked to improved reading achievement (Brady, Fowler, Stone, & Winbury, 1994; Lie, 1991; Lundberg, Frost, & Petersen, 1988; Wagner & Torgesen, 1987; Vellutino & Scanlon, 1987). In a longitudinal study designed to evaluate the effects of phonemic awareness training on preschool childrens reading achievement, Lundberg et al., determined that explicitly providing children with the tools necessary to tap into the phonological structure of language had facilitating effects on reading and spelling ability through the second grade. Children who were not provided with phonemic awareness training performed consistently lower on measures of achievement than children receiving the training. As the training research literature details, phonemic awareness skills can be taught and furthermore these skills can be developed at an early age via direct instruction (Byrne & FieldingBarnsley, 1991; Cunningham, 1990). In fact, the earlier children acquire phonemic awareness ability, the more beneficial it is to the development of their reading skills. Multiple reviews of the research literature have found that phonemic awareness has the largest impact on reading skill during the earliest stages of reading acquisition (de Jong & van der Leij, 1999, 2002; Bus & van IJzendoorn, 1999; Tunmer, Herriman, & Nesdale, 1988). Being aware of childrens level of phonological sensitivity during the preschool years can help to identify children at risk for developing reading difficulties and help prevent these children from ever falling behind, which could effectively negate the need for later remediation of phonological skills (Anthony, Lonigan, Driscoll, Phillips, & Burgess, 2003). In order for phonemic awareness skills to have the most substantial effect on the development of early reading ability, researchers are reaching a consensus that phonemic awareness skills should be taught in conjunction with letter-sound awareness, not as an isolated set of skills (Schneider, Roth,

Phonemic Awareness
In order for beginning readers to gain an understanding of the alphabetic principle that letters represent individual sounds of the language and the sounds of our language can be represented by letters phonemic awareness is a necessary construct that must be developed (Ball & Blachman, 1991). It is through this knowledge that children can understand that the written language is a symbolic representation of the spoken language (Bialystok, 1991). Phonemic awareness is defined as the ability to recognize that spoken words are comprised of individual phonemes. The ability to manipulate these phonemes, exchanging one for another, segmenting a spoken word into its constituent phonemes, or isolating specific phonemes from a spoken word is how phonemic awareness is typically assessed. A child who is phonemically aware has the necessary skills to apply to other word-level instructional tasks (Blachman, 2000).Without this tool, beginning

Research Brief

& Ennemoser, 2000; McGuinness, McGuinness, & Donahue, 1995). Bus and van IJzendoorn (1999) concluded that phonemic awareness training combined with letter-sound knowledge proved to be more effective than phonemic awareness training alone. Furthermore, phonemic awareness training combined with systematic phonics instruction yields stronger decoding skills than either of the skills taught individually (Torgesen, Wagner, Rashotte, Rose, Lindamood, & Conway, et al., 1999; Schneider et al., 2000). It is believed that phonemic awareness and letter knowledge interact in such a manner to provide learners with concrete mental representations of phonemes and words (Hhn & Ehri, 1983; Dixon, Stuart, & Masterson, 2002). However, this relationship is also reciprocal in nature, as both Juel, Griffith, and Gough (1986) and Groff (2001) point out: children will not be capable of acquiring letter-sound correspondences until a prerequisite amount of phonemic awareness has been obtained.

through this combined intervention that children who were labeled as at risk were able to effectively catch up to the level of reading achievement performance demonstrated by their peers. Though letter knowledge has a larger impact when taught in conjunction with phonemic awareness, it has been shown to be an independent factor contributing to reading development. Children who arrive at school with the ability to identify letters of the alphabet are more likely to become readers within the first few months of beginning school (Riley, 1996). It is through interactions with print and an understanding of print conventions that afford children the knowledge that the written language is symbolic of the spoken language (Riley, 1996; Lomax & McGee, 1987) and it is that fact which gives childrens developing letter knowledge a functional importance. Additionally, letter naming measured in preschool had been shown to be significantly correlated with reading and spelling up through the sixth grade (Badian, 1995). However, it is important to note that training childrens knowledge of letter-sound correspondences does not causally impact reading growth. Walsh, Price and Gillingham (1988) found that facilitated letter naming ability was correlated with subsequent reading growth, but training letter knowledge did not directly increase reading achievement. The impact of letter knowledge therefore is indirect, and while it is necessary, it is not sufficient in of itself to cause reading growth. Even though letter knowledge alone is not causally related to reading achievement, it does play a significant role in developing reading skills. Research has been deconstructing what the important aspect of letter knowledge is that contributes to reading growth. Walsh et al., (1988) believe it is the ease at which children can name letters that makes letter knowledge such a significant factor. This could very well be the case, as much recent research has centered on the importance that the rapid automatized naming of letters, colors, words, etc. plays in acquiring fluent reading skills (Denckla & Rudel, 1974; Wolf, 1991). Another possible factor that contributes to the impact letter knowledge has on reading achievement may be tied not just to the

Letter Knowledge
The reciprocal nature of letter knowledge and phonemic awareness has led many researchers to recommend that the two skills be taught in tandem beginning at the preschool level. The most direct evidence for this suggestion lies in the fact that letter knowledge and phonemic awareness are equally good predictors of first-grade reading achievement and, moreover, the two skills have been found to be the best predictors overall (Share, Jorm, Maclean, & Matthews, 1984; Ehri & Sweet, 1991). In an extension of these findings, Johnson, Anderson, and Holligan (1996) found that explicit awareness of phonemes occurred only after children began learning the letters of the alphabet and phonemic awareness skills were rarely present for preschool children who lacked letter knowledge. In fact, letter knowledge has been found to have a causal impact on the development of phonemic awareness (Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1994), further emphasizing the need to develop childrens letter knowledge as early as possible. Schneider et al., (2000) concluded training letter knowledge and phonemic awareness in parallel had the strongest impact on later reading and spelling scores and most importantly this dual training was found to be quite beneficial for at-risk children. It was only

Activate Early Learning!

childs ability to name letters but also the childs knowledge of the correspondence between the letter and the sound of the letter (Samuels, 1972). This factor is directly related to the important reciprocal connection that exists between letter knowledge and phonemic awareness. Extending from that fact, letter knowledge may play a significant role in helping children learn to decode by providing a mechanism by which children can use known letters as a cue to recognizing words in print (Ehri & Wilce, 1987; Ehri & Sweet, 1991). This strategy, known as phonetic cue reading, allows children to use the letters seen in spellings to connect to the pronunciation of words heard in the spoke language. These connections are stored in memory and can later be retrieved when the word is encountered again. Though this strategy will not continue to work as more and more novel words are introduced, this stage can be a beneficial decoding strategy initially and may be a stage children naturally progress through while learning to read (Frith, 1985).

Summary
Designed to be implemented during the earliest stages of reading development, the Activate Early Learning! program is a research-based, early intervention and prevention program that identifies and provides rigorous, developmentally appropriate instruction for children who may already be struggling readers, as well as helps prevent children from falling behind. A review of the Activate Early Learning! Teachers Guide provides clear evidence as to how each lesson focuses on the key, researchidentified building blocks of reading development enumerated in this report: oral language ability, concepts about print, phonemic awareness, and letter knowledge, all of which have been shown to be important prerequisites for skilled reading achievement. By lessening the potential that children will fall behind, Activate Early Learning! helps ensure that children develop the skills research indicates are essential to becoming successful readers.

Research Brief

References
Adams, M.J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Adams, M.J. (1993). Beginning to read: An overview. In R. Beard (Ed.), Teaching literacy and balancing perspectives. Great Britain: Hodder and Stoughton. Allington, R.L. (1984). Content coverage and contextual reading in reading groups. Journal of Reading Behavior, 16, 85-96. Anthony, J.L., Lonigan, C.J., Driscoll, K., Phlllips, B.M., & Burgess, S.R. (2003). Phonological sensitivity: A quasi-parallel progression of word structure units and cognitive operations. Reading Research Quarterly, 38, 470-487. Badian, N.A. (1995). Predicting reading ability over the long term: The changing roles of letter naming, phonological awareness and orthographic processing. Annals of Dyslexia, 45, 79-96. Ball, E., & Blachman, B.A. (1991). Does phoneme awareness training in kindergarten make a difference in early word recognition and developmental spelling? Reading Research Quarterly, 26, 49-66. Bialystok, E. (1991). Letters, sounds, and symbols: Changes in childrens understanding of written language. Applied Psycholinguistics, 12, 75-89. Blachman, B.A. (2000). Phonological awareness. In M. Kamil, P. Mostenthal, P. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of reading research: Vol. 3 (pp. 483-502). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Blachowicz, C.L.Z., & Fisher, P. (2000). Vocabulary instruction. In M. Kamil, P. Mostenthal, P. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of reading research: Vol. 3 (pp. 503-523). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Brady, S.B., Fowler, A., Stone, B., & Winbury, N. (1994). Training phonological awareness: A study with inner-city kindergarten children. Annals of Dyslexia, 44, 26-59.

Bus, A.G., & van IJzendoorn, M.H. (1995). Mothers reading to their 3-year-olds: The role of mother-child attachment security in becoming literate. Reading Research Quarterly, 30, 998-1015. Bus, A.G., & van IJzendoorn, M.H. (1999). Phonological awareness and early reading: A metaanalysis of experimental training studies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 403-414. Bus, A.G., van IJzendoorn, M.H., & Pellegrini, A.D. (1995). Joint book reading makes for success in learning to read: A meta-analysis on intergenerational transmission of literacy. Review of Educational Research, 65, 1-21. Byrne, B., & Fielding-Barnsley, R. (1991). Evaluation of a program to teach phonemic awareness to young children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 83, 451-455. Chard, D.J., & Kameenui, E.J. (2000). Struggling first-grade readers: The frequency and progress of their reading. The Journal of Special Education, 34, 28-38 Chomsky, C. (1972). Stages in language development and reading exposure. Harvard Educational Review, 22, 1-33. Cunningham, A.E. (1990). Explicit versus implicit instruction in phonemic awareness. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 50, 429-444. Day, K.C., & Day, H.D. (1984). Kindergarten knowledge of print conventions and later school achievement: A five-year follow-up. Psychology in the Schools, 21, 393-396. de Jong, P.F., & van der Leij, A. (1999). Specific contributions of phonological abilities to early reading acquisition: Results from a Dutch latent variable longitudinal study. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 450-476. de Jong, P.F., & van der Leij, A. (2002). Effects of phonological abilities and linguistic comprehension on the development of reading. Scientific Studies of Reading, 6, 51-77.

Activate Early Learning!

Denckla, M.B., & Rudel, R.G. (1974). Rapid automatized naming of pictured objects, colors, letters, and numbers by normal children. Cortex, 10, 186-202. Dickinson, D.K., & Tabors, P.O. (1991). Early literacy: Linkages between home, school, and literacy achievement at age five. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 6, 30-46. Dickinson, D.K., & Smith, M.W. (1991). Preschool Talk: Patterns of teacher-child interaction in early childhood classrooms. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 6, 20-29. Dickinson, D.K., & Smith, M.W. (1994). Longterm effects of preschool teachers book readings on low-income childrens vocabulary and story comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly, 29, 105-122. Dickinson, D.K., & Sprague, K.E. (2001). The nature and impact of early childhood care environments on the language and early literacy development of children from low-income families. In S.B. Neuman, & D.K. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook of early literacy research (pp. 263-280). New York: Guilford Press. Dixon, M., Stuart, M., & Masterson, J. (2002). The relationship between phonological awareness and the development of orthographic representations. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 15, 295-316. Ehri, L.C., & Sweet, J. (1991). Finger-point reading of memorized text: What enables beginners to process the print. Reading Research Quarterly, 26, 442-462. Ehri, L.C., & Wilce, L.S. (1987). Does learning to spell help beginners learn to read words? Reading Research Quarterly, 22, 47-65. Elley, W. (1989). Vocabulary acquisition from listening to stories. Reading Research Quarterly, 24, 174-187. Ferreiro, E., & Teberosky, A. (1982). Literacy before schooling. Exeter, NH: Heinemann.

Fielding-Barnsley, R., & Purdie, N. (2003). Early intervention in the home for children at risk of reading failure. Support for Learning, 18, 77-82. Francis, D.J., Shaywitz, S.E., Stuebing, K.K., Shaywitz, B.A., & Fletcher, J.M. (1996). Developmental lag versus deficit models of reading disability: A longitudinal, individual growth curves analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 88, 3-17. Frith, U. (1985). Beneath the surface of phonetic dyslexia. In K. Patterson, J. Marshall, & M. Coltheart (Eds.), Surface dyslexia: Neuropsychological and cognitive studies of phonological reading (pp. 301-330). London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Groff, P. (2001). Teaching phonics: Letter-tophoneme, phoneme-to-letter, or both? Reading & Writing Quarterly, 17, 291-306. Hart, B., & Risley, T.R. (2003). The early catastrophe. American Educator, 27, 4-9. Hiebert, E.H. (1980). The relationship of logical reasoning ability, oral language comprehension, and home experiences to preschool childrens print awareness. Journal of Reading Behavior, 12, 313324. Hiebert, E.H. (1981). Developmental patterns and interrelationships of preschool childrens print awareness. Reading Research Quarterly, 15, 203-227. Hhn, W. E., & Ehri, L.C. (1983). Do alphabetic letters help prereaders acquire phonemic segmentation skill? Journal of Educational Psychology, 75, 752-762. Johnston, R.S., Anderson, M., & Holligan, C. (1996). Knowledge of the alphabet and explicit awareness of the phonemes in pre-readers: The nature of the relationship. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 8, 217-234. Juel, C. (1988). Learning to read and write: A longitudinal study of 54 children from first through fourth grades. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80, 437-447.

Research Brief

Juel, C., Griffith, P.L., & Gough, P,B. (1986). Acquisition of literacy: A longitudinal study of children in first and second grade. Journal of Educational Psychology, 78, 243-255. Kameenui, E.J. (1993). Diverse learners and the tyranny of time: Dont fix blame fix the leaky roof. The Reading Teacher, 46, 376-383. Lesiak, J.L. (1997). Research based answers to questions about emergent literacy in kindergarten. Psychology in the Schools, 34, 143-160. Lie, A. (1991). Effects of a training program for stimulating skills in word analysis in first-grade children. Reading Research Quarterly, 26, 234-250. Lomax, R.G., & McGee, L.M. (1987). Young childrens concepts about print and reading: Toward a model of word reading acquisition. Reading Research Quarterly, 22, 237-256. Lundberg, I., Frost, J., & Petersen, O.P. (1988). Effects of an extensive program for stimulating phonological awareness in preschool children. Reading Research Quarterly, 23, 263-284. Lyon, R. (1998). Overview of reading and literacy initiatives. Paper presented meeting of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, Washington, DC. McGuinness, D., McGuinness, C., & Donahue, J. (1995). Phonological training and the alphabet principle: Evidence for reciprocal causality. Reading Research Quarterly, 30, 830-852. Meyer, L.A., Wardrop, J.L., Stahl, S.A., & Linn, R. (1994). Effects of reading storybooks aloud to children. Journal of Educational Research, 88, 6985. Morrow, L.M., & Gambrell, L.B. (2001). Literaturebased instruction in the early years. In S.B. Neuman, & D.K. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook of early literacy research (pp. 348-360). New York: Guilford Press.

National Reading Panel (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidenced-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. NIH Publication No. 004754. Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Neuman, S.B. (1996). Evaluation of the Books Aloud Project: An Executive Summary. Report to the William Penn Foundation from Books Aloud, Temple University, Philadelphia. Reutzel, D.R., Oda, L.K., & Moore, B.H. (1989). Developing print awareness: The effect of three instructional approaches on kindergartners print awareness, reading readiness, and word reading. Journal of Reading Behavior, 21, 197-217. Riley, J.L. (1996). The ability to label the letters of the alphabet at school entry: A discussion on its value. Journal of Research in Reading, 2, 87-101. Samuels, S.J. (1972). The effect of letter-name knowledge on learning to read. American Educational Research Journal, 9, 65-74. Schneider, W., Roth, E., Ennemoser, M. (2000). Training phonological skills and letter knowledge in children at risk for dyslexia: A comparison of three kindergarten intervention programs. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92, 284-295. Share, D.L., Jorm, A.F., Maclean, R., & Matthews, R. (1984). Sources of individual differences in reading acquisition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 76, 1309-1324. Shaywitz, B.A., Fletcher, J.M., Holahan, J.M., & Shaywitz, S.E. (1992). Discrepancy compared to low achievement definitions of reading disability: Result from the Connecticut longitudinal study. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 25, 639-648. Snow, C.E. (1991). The theoretical basis for relationships between language and literacy in development. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 6, 5-10.

10

Activate Early Learning!

Snow, C.E., Burns, M.S., & Griffin, P. (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Snow, C.E., Tabors, P.O., Nicholson, P.A., & Kurland, B.F. (1995). SHELL: Oral language and early literacy skills in kindergarten and firstgrade children. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 10, 37-48. Stahl, S.A., & Murray, B.A. (1993). Environmental print, phonemic awareness, letter recognition, and word recognition. In D.J. Leu & C.K. Kinzer (Eds.), Examining central issues in literacy research, theory, and practice; Forty-second yearbook of the National Reading Conference. Chicago: National Reading Conference. Stanovich, K.E. (1986). Matthew effects in reading: Some consequences of individual differences in the acquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 21, 360-407. Torgesen, J.K., Wagner, R.K., Rashotte, C.A., Rose, E., Lindamood, P., Conway, T., et al. (1999). Preventing reading failure in young children with phonological processing disabilities: Group and individual responses to instruction. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 579-593. Tunmer, W.E., Herriman, M.L., & Nesdale, A.R. (1988). Metalinguistic abilities and beginning reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 23, 134-158. Vellutino, F.R., & Scanlon, D.M. (1987). Phonological coding, phonological awareness, and reading ability: Evidence from a longitudinal experimental study. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 33, 321-363.

Wagner, R.K., & Torgesen, J.K. (1987). The nature of phonological processing and its causal role in the acquisition of reading skills. Psychological Bulletin, 101, 192-212. Wagner, R.K., Torgeson, J.K., & Rashotte, C.A. (1994). Development of reading-related phonological processing abilities: New evidence of bidirectional causality from a latent variable longitudinal study. Developmental Psychology, 30, 73-87. Walsh, D.J., Price, G.G., & Gillingham, M.G. (1988). The critical but transitory importance of letter naming. Reading Research Quarterly, 23, 108-122. Whitehurst, G.J., Arnold, D.S., Epstein, J.N., & Angell, A.L. (1994). A picture-book reading intervention in day care and home for children from low-income families. Developmental Psychology, 30, 679-689. Wolf, M. (1991). Naming speed and reading: The contribution of the cognitive neurosciences. Reading Research Quarterly, 26, 123-141. Zhang, H., & Alex, N.K. (1995). Oral language development across the curriculum, K-12. Bloomington, IN: ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading English and Communication (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED389029).

Research Brief

11

2004 Harcourt Achieve All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A. 5M/NY/SPEC/9-04 9992769491 INDIV 9992769505 25-PACK

www.HarcourtAchieve.com 1.800.531.5015