Six instructional assistants taught the Early Reading Intervention (ERI) curriculum to 38 at-risk kindergarten students, and 32 nonrisk students served as comparisons. Student risk was determined based on performance on the "Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills" subtests of Nonsense Word Fluency, Letter Naming Fluency, and Phoneme…

Literacy instruction for students with significant intellectual disabilities traditionally emphasizes isolated skills instruction focusing on sight words and basic vocabulary. Recent research suggests these students benefit from high-quality instruction that includes comprehension and storybook reading. This study examined the effect of a…

Patterns of identification for special education services across three cohorts of students in kindergarten through third grade before and after implementation of a schoolwide, three-tier reading prevention model in one large school district are reported. The first cohort of students represents a historical control group that did not participate in…

Two approaches to systematic word review were integrated into an 18-week program of extended vocabulary instruction with kindergarten students from three high-need urban schools. Words in the embedded and semantically related review conditions received systematic and distributed review. In the embedded review condition, brief word definitions were…

The reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act has initiated changes that are affecting early literacy assessment, and it has prompted the growing use of measures that incorporate phonological and alphabetic fluency. However, the question of how phonological and alphabetic fluency can inhibit (or promote) reading…

This investigation examined the effectiveness of teaching letter sounds in a small group arrangement using computer-assisted instruction with SMART Board technology and a 3s constant time delay procedure to three students with learning disabilities. A multiple probe design across letter sound sets and replicated across students evaluate the…

Six kindergarten students at risk for reading difficulties were taught to tutor each other and provide accurate feedback with the use of a prerecorded sight word model. Students were taught the components of reciprocal peer tutoring and were asked to tutor each other on unknown, phonetically irregular sight words. An A-B-A-B reversal design…

Three important features to examine for measures used to systematically monitor progress over time are (a) technical features of static scores, (b) technical features of slope, and (c) instructional utility. The purpose of this study was to investigate the technical features of slope of four early numeracy curriculum-based measures administered to…

The phenomenon of using progress monitoring data to inform literacy instruction was explored in the context of four schools during their 2nd year of Reading First implementation. Open-ended interviews and surveys from 10 teachers, purposefully selected for maximum variation in effectiveness and skills and resistance to using data to inform…

In this article, the authors review eight published and widely used curricula for teaching phonemic awareness. They describe characteristics that enhance ease of use and delivery of instruction and review how each of the programs addresses design features of phonemic awareness instruction supported by research evidence. Their findings indicated…