Literacy skills of 1 st grade children were assessed; one group received instruction in phonemic awareness in kindergarten, while one group did not. Both groups received phonemic awareness instruction during 1 st grade. At the beginning of 1 st grade, the group with early phonemic awareness training scored higher on phoneme segmentation and had fewer children identified for reading difficulties. By middle of 1 st grade, literacy skills of children without the early training were comparable to skills of children with such training in kindergarten. Results suggest that learning phonemic awareness skills during 1 st grade supports grade level reading, learning phonemic awareness skills can occur within a short time period, and learning these skills beyond a sufficient level does not necessarily result in improved oral reading fluency.

The connection between service learning and ASL instruction is advantageous because students gained cultural understanding as well as language skills. This course design could be used at other institutions where a Deaf community is accessible.

This study examined the English literacy skills of children in an immersion school, some of whom were enrolled in a French program and some in a Spanish program. The English literacy skills of the children enrolled in the Spanish program were consistently better than the English literacy skills of the children enrolled in the French program. In addition, with English literacy instruction provided during first grade, both French and Spanish groups achieved expected scores on the English literacy tests by the end of first grade. The results of this study suggest that learning English literacy skills was enhanced by concurrently learning a second language with a consistent orthography.

Social and communication behaviors are often a focus of instruction for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). A theatre rehearsal and production process is challenging and joyful work that nurtures the development of social and language skills. This study evaluated and described social and language behaviors for students with ASD both before and after a 10-week theatre experience. The results indicated that, when compared with a control group, the students with theatre experiences had significant and positive changes in the development of social and language skills. Most particularly, these students had significant improvement in Social Responsiveness, acknowledgement of the Perspective of Others, and Participation and Cooperation. The theatre experiences led to positive changes in social and communication behaviors for students with ASD.

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