A Selection of Readings on Early Reading for Teachers

Highlights from Six Landmark Reports, Plus Lists of Additional Readings Within Each of Five Decades
Compiled by Charles Arthur

I. Teaching Disadvantaged Children in the Preschool, Carl Bereiter & Siegfried Engelmann 1966

  1. Teaching Strategies and Reading Program
  2. Preventing Failure in the Primary Grades – Chapter 4 – Reading for the Nonreader – Sounds and Letters
  3. Preventing Failure in the Primary Grades – Chapter 4 – Reading for the Nonreader – Reading Words

II. Historic 1967 Report by Jeanne Chall, Learning to Read, the Great Debate

  1. Introduction
  2. Chapter One, the Conventional Wisdom
  3. Chapter Three, Research – Science or Ideology?
  4. Chapter Six, Reading Failure – Is Method at Fault?
  5. Research Synthesis of Chall’s Learning to Read author unknown

Additional publications from 1970 – 1980 (electronically available on request)

  • Explicit Syllable and Phoneme Segmentation in the Young Child, Isabelle Liberman, 1974
  • Project Follow Through results for the Oregon Direct Instruction Model 1977 report
  • Coding and Comprehension in Skill Reading, Charles Perfetti, 1979
  • What the Study of Eye Movement Reveals About Reading, George W. McConkie, 1979
  • Learning to Read, an Unnatural Act, Phillip Gough, 1979
  • Speech, the Alphabet, and Teaching to Read, Isabelle Liberman, 1979
  • Two Approaches to Initial Reading Instruction: An analysis of the Reading Unlimited Program and the New Primary Grades Reading System, Helen Mitchell Popp, 1979

III. Jeanne Chall’s 1983 Update of Learning to Read, the Great Debate

  1. Introduction
  2. Research on Different Kinds of Phonics
  3. Basic Research and the Great Debate
  4. The Great Debate – Then and Now
  5. Reading & Early Childhood Education: Stages of Reading Development, J. Chall, 1989

Additional publications from 1980 to 1990 (electronically available by request)

  • Phonology and Beginning Reading Revisited, Isabelle Liberman, 1989
  • Whole Language vs. Code Emphasis, Underlying Assumptions and Their Implications for Reading Instruction, Isabelle and Alvin Liberman, 1990
  • Oral Blending, Paul Weisberg 1989
  • Phonology & the Problems of Learning to read, I. Liberman & D. Shankweiler, 1985
  • Decoding, Reading, and Reading Disability, Phillip Gough & William Tunmer, 1986

IV. The 1990 Commissioned Report by Marilyn Adams on Beginning to Read

  1. Brief Introduction and Summary, compiled by C. Arthur
  2. Review by D. Shankweiler 1992
  3. Changing Models K. Stanovich 1991
  4. The Reconceptualizing the Development of Sight Word Reading and Its Relationship to Recoding (Highlights) Linnea Ehri, 1992
  5. Oral Blending in Young Children: Effects of Sound Pauses, Initial Sound, and Word Familiarity, Paul Weinberg, Bruno J. Andracchio and Christopher F. Savard, 1989

Additional publications from 1990 to 1995 (electronically available on request)

  • Phonics and Beginning Reading Instruction, Marilyn Adams, In Reading, Language, and Literacy:  Instruction for the Twenty-First Century.  (Eds.) Fran Lehr & Jean Osborn 1994

Highlights of each chapter, Beginning to Read, Marilyn Adams 1990

  • Part I, Chapters 1 & 2, Putting Word Recognition in Perspective & Reading Words and meanings: from an Age-old Problem to a Contemporary Crisis
  • Part II, Chapters 3 & 4, Program Comparisons & Research on Prereaders
  • Part III, Chapters 5 & 6, Outside-In-Models of Reading: What Skilled Readers Look Like They do & Analyzing the Reading Process: Orthographic Processing
    Chapters 7 & 8, Analyzing the Reading Process: Use and Uses of Meaning & Adding the Phonological Processor: How the Whole System Works together
  • Part IV, Chapter 10, On the Goals of Print Instruction: What do we want students to learn?
  • Part V, Chapters 11 & 12, On Teaching Phonics First & Phonological Prerequisites: Becoming Aware of Spoken Words. Chapters 13 & 14, Learning about Print: The First Steps & To Reading from Writing
  • Part VI, Summary and Conclusions, Chapter 15, The Proper Place of Phonics

 

  • The Role of Phonology in Young Children Learning to Read Words: The direct mapping Hypothesis. J. Rack, C. Hulme, M. Snowling, & J. Wightman, 1994
  • The Representation Problem in Reading Acquisition, Charles Perfetti, 1992
  • Cognitive Processes in Early Reading Development: Accommodating Individual Differences into a Model of Acquisition, (Highlights) David Share & Keith Stanovich 1995
  • Romance and Reality. (Let scientific evidence answer questions about reading process) 1994

V. Jeanne Challs’ 1996 Update for Learning to Read, The Great Debate

  1. Introduction
  2. The New Reading Debates

Additional publications from 1995 to 2000 (electronically available on request)

  • Grapheme-Phoneme Knowledge Is Essential for Learning to Read Words in English, Linnea Ehri, 1998
  • Reading: A Research-Based Approach, Jack Fletcher & Reid Lyon, 1998
  • The Reading Researcher and the Reading Teacher Need the Right Theory of Speech, Alvin Liberman, 1999

Highlights from Three Catherine Snow Reports on Teaching Reading

  • 1998 – Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, National Research Council (NRC)
  • 2007 -Teaching Children to Read: What do We Know about How to Do It?, 2007,
  • 2016 – Reading and Language in the Early Grades.2016.

VI. The 2000 Commissioned Report of the National Reading Panel

  1. Teaching Phonological Awareness: An Explanation of the National Reading Panel Meta-Analysis, Linnea Ehri, 2004
  2. Teaching Phonics: An Explanation of the National Reading Panel Meta-Analysis, Linnea Ehri, 2004
  3. Direct Instruction Reading, (2004 & 2010 edition Highlights) Preface & Model of Instruction
  4. Direct Instruction Reading, (2010) Phonemic Awareness & Alphabetic Understanding

Additional Twentieth Century publications (electronically available on request)

  • Lessons Learned from Research on Intervention for Students Who have Difficulty Learning to Read. Joseph Torgesen. 2004
  • Efficacy of Phonics Teaching for Reading Outcomes. Indications from Post-NRP Research, Susan Brady, 2011
  • Decoding, Vocabulary, and Comprehension: The Golden Triangle of Reading Skill, Charles Perfetti, 2010
  • Phonology Is Critical in Reading, But a Phonological Deficit is Not the Only Source of Low Reading skill, Charles Perfetti, 2011
  • Neuroimaging and the Phonological Deficit Hypothesis, Joshua Diehl, Stephen Frost, Einar Menci & Kenneth Pugh.
  • Phonological Impairment May Be Causing Dyslexia: MIT Study, Tyler Perrachione with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, taken from, “Human Voice Recognition Depends on Language Ability”, Tyler K. Perrachione, Stephanie N. Del Tufo, John D. E. Gabrieli, Science Magazine, 2011
  • Hard Words. Why aren’t kids being taught to read? Emily Hanford, 2018
  • Combining Phonological Awareness and Word Recognition Instruction. Benita Blachman et al. 2019 reprint in Perspectives from earlier 1988 publication.
  • How Do Kids Learn to Read? What the Science Says. Sarah Schwartz and Sarah Sparks. EdWeek, October 5, 2019
  • Meeting the Challenges of Early Literacy Phonics Instruction. Literacy Leadership Brief for the International Literacy Association ILA (formerly the IRA?) Principal Author, W. Blevins. 2019.