Over the past decade, fluent reading has come to be seen as a central component of skilled reading and a driving force in the literacy curriculum. However, much of this focus has centered on a relatively narrow definition of reading fluency, one that emphasizes automatic word recognition. This article attempts to expand this understanding by…

In the present study, 81 fifth grade and 82 eighth grade children completed a continuous lexical decision priming task that examined their reading times for evidence of sensitivity to the morphological structure of words during reading. A lexical decision task measured students' response times to target words preceded by a prime (which children…

The goals of this study were to (a) develop an empirically based model regarding the development of fluent and automatic reading in the early elementary school years and (b) determine whether fluent text-reading skills provided benefits for reading comprehension beyond those accounted for by fluent word decoding. First-, second-, and third-grade…

Leveled books originally selected by or produced for use in Reading Recovery or its regular classroom initiative are now also widely used in regular and special classrooms having no affiliation with Reading Recovery. The frequent use of these leveled books in settings other than Reading Recovery raises an important question: Do books leveled for…

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…

This study examined the effectiveness of a little book curriculum in facilitating the independent word-solving skills of first-grade readers. The curriculum was based on a theoretical model that identified two critical dimensions of text-based support for beginning readers: linguistic content and cognitive load. The 15-week little book…

Tests a hypothesis about the growth of word knowledge in kindergarten and first graders. Notes that it was predicted that phoneme awareness develops in phases and that ability to finger-point read interacts with phoneme awareness in the development of early reading skill. Concludes that structural equation modeling showed that the longitudinal…

Analyzes word recognition instruction in four first-grade classrooms. Finds that: differential instruction may be helpful in first grade; children who enter first grade with low literacy benefit from early and heavy exposure to phonics; and a structured phonics curriculum that includes both onsets and rimes and sounding and blending phonemes…

Examines literacy development among a group of preschool and kindergarten children through changes in the form, function, and perception of their written names. Studies 67 3-, 4-, and 5-year olds, their teachers, instructional aides, and 6 case-study parents participating in a yearlong analysis. Concludes that "name" has the instructional…

Examines school and classroom factors that moderated gender and home language gaps in reading achievement of New Zealand students. Uses data from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement survey to examine comprehension and word recognition scores of nine-year-olds. Shows that the magnitude of the gender gap and…

Finds that third and fifth graders were able to select characters containing the correct radicals (a component of Chinese characters that provides information about the character's meaning) even when the characters as a whole were unfamiliar to them. Finds that good readers displayed more awareness of radicals than poor readers. (RS)

Compiles data from 27 studies comprising the Cooperative Research Program in First-Grade Reading Instruction. Reveals ability to recognize letters of the alphabet prior to beginning reading instruction was the best predictor of first-grade reading achievement. Indicates various nonbasal programs tended to be superior as measured by word…

Finds that Japanese fifth graders' naming speed was a good indicator of the automaticity of the lexical access for both syllabaries and morphograms, but that skilled/less-skilled differences in vocalization latencies were greater for real words than for pseudowords for both hiragana and kanji. Discusses the applicability of C. A. Perfetti's verbal…