Research in ECSE
The importance of multi-faceted and research-verified teaching methods to facilitate emergent literacy skills in young children
- Studies suggest that children’s pre-phonics skills have more impact on the child’s success in kindergarten and first grade as the child begins reading
- Studies also suggest that pre-comprehension skills are more related to reading success in later grades.
- Interventions for pre-phonics skills may be especially important for children with disabilities (D’Arcangelo, 1999; Terman, et al, 1996).
- Experiences that lead to the development of precursors of decoding skills are not the same as those that facilitate comprehension skills - e.g., children’s experiences in shared reading predict comprehension skills but not decoding skills(Whitehurst et al, 1998).
- Many practitioners believe that reading instruction, especially the direct instruction of early literacy skills should be put off until children are “developmentally ready.” Delayed instruction actually fosters increased failure. Effective early intervention and prevention includes the direct teaching of critical literacy skills, such as phonemic awareness, letter recognition, oral language and vocabulary development (Foorman, et al., 1997: Good et al., 1998; California Special Education Reading Task Force, 1999) needs to begin early