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The purpose of the present study was to examine the effectiveness and feasibility of phonological awareness training, with and without a beginning decoding component. Thirty-three teachers in 8 urban schools were assigned randomly within their schools to 3 groups: control, phonological awareness training, and phonological awareness training with beginning decoding instruction and practice. Following training, teachers in the 2 treatment groups conducted the treatments for about 20 weeks. In each teacher's class, pre-and posttreatment data were collected on 12-14 children (N = 404); 312 children were tested again the following fall. At the end of kindergarten, the 2 treatment groups performed comparably and outperformed controls on the phonological awareness measures. On alphabetic (reading and spelling) tasks, however, the group participating in phonological awareness training with beginning decoding instruction did better than the other 2 groups. In the fall of the next year, many of these between-group differences remained but were less impressive. Implications are discussed for bridging research and practice.

In this study, students and their teachers participated in a layered approach to reading intervention in kindergarten through third grade that included professional development for teachers in scientifically based reading instruction, ongoing measurement of reading progress, and additional small-group or individual instruction for students whose progress was insufficient to maintain grade-level reading achievement. Reading outcomes were compared with historical control groups of students in the same schools. The findings revealed overall improvements in reading, improved reading for students who began the study in high-risk categories, and decreases in the incidence of reading disability at the end of third grade. Implications for scaling up are discussed.

In this research we evaluated two methods to improve the reading fluency of struggling readers. Poor readers in Grades 2 and 4 with ( n = 17) and without ( n = 20) learning disabilities were randomly assigned to one of two fluency practice variations or to a control group. Students in the treatments practiced reading aloud under repeated or continuous reading conditions with an adult listener in 15-min sessions, 3 days per week for 14 weeks. For students in the treatment conditions, growth curve analyses revealed significant differences in fluency and reading comprehension over students in the control. We found no significant differences between practice conditions.

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