Core Elements of Reading Skills

In 2008, the National Institute of Literacy issued its report, Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel, and, among its many findings, stated that the foundational reading and writing skills that develop from birth to age five have a clear and consistently strong relationship with later conventional literacy skills. “These six variables not only correlated with later literacy as shown by data drawn from multiple studies with large numbers of children, but also maintained their predictive power even when the role of other variables, such as IQ or socioeconomic status, were accounted for.” The six variables are:

  • Alphabet knowledge: Knowledge of the names and sounds associated with printed letters
  • Phonological awareness: The ability to detect, manipulate, or analyze the auditory aspects of spoken language (including the ability to distinguish or segment words, syllables, or phonemes) independent of meaning
  • Rapid automatic naming of letters or digits: The ability to rapidly name a sequence of random letters or digits
  • Rapid automatic naming of objects or colors: The ability to rapidly name a sequence of repeating random sets of pictures of objects (e.g., car, tree, house, man) or colors
  • Writing or writing name: The ability to write letters in isolation on request or to write one’s own name
  • Phonological memory: The ability to remember spoken information for a short period of time

An additional five early literacy skills were also correlated with at least one measure of later literacy achievement, including:

  • Concepts about print: Knowledge of print conventions (e.g., left–right, front– back) and concepts (e.g., book cover, author, text)
  • Print knowledge: A combination of elements of alphabet knowledge, concepts about print and early decoding
  • Reading readiness: Usually a combination of alphabet knowledge, concepts of print, vocabulary, memory, and phonological awareness
  • Phonological awareness: Oral language or the ability to produce or comprehend spoken language, including vocabulary and grammar
  • Visual processing: The ability to match or discriminate visually presented symbols

These eleven variables consistently predicted later literacy achievement for both preschoolers and kindergartners. Typically, these measures were more closely linked to literacy achievement at the end of kindergarten or beginning of first grade, although oral language, when assessed by more complex measures, was found to play a bigger role in later literacy achievement. Children’s early phonological awareness—that is, their ability to distinguish among sounds within auditory language—also predicted later literacy achievement (Adams, 2006).

Notes:

Folksonomies: education reading

Taxonomies:
/family and parenting/children (0.515142)
/science/mathematics/arithmetic (0.498489)
/health and fitness/disorders (0.455496)

Keywords:
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Entities:
National Early Literacy Panel:Organization (0.874059 (neutral:0.000000)), National Institute of Literacy:Organization (0.766234 (neutral:0.000000)), Adams:Person (0.327002 (neutral:0.000000))

Concepts:
Writing (0.988555): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Phonology (0.986374): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Kindergarten (0.799893): dbpedia | freebase
Written language (0.775199): dbpedia | freebase
Linguistics (0.767767): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
International Phonetic Alphabet (0.750708): dbpedia | freebase | yago
Dyslexia (0.736401): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Communication (0.732969): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc

 The Joy and Power of Reading: A Summary of Research and Expert Opinion
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Bridges, Lois (2015), The Joy and Power of Reading: A Summary of Research and Expert Opinion, Scholastic, Retrieved on 2015-11-09
  • Source Material [www.scholastic.com]
  • Folksonomies: education reading


    Schemas