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- Reading is an essential skill for success in school and life.
- Over 40% of fourth and eighth graders fail to read well enough to perform grade-level work.
- Reading failure leads to further problems: low self-esteem, low expectations, and a cycle of poor achievement.
- Reading instruction for poor readers may focus on word-level problems, giving students the idea that reading is boring and meaningless.
- Readers face a Matthew effect, in which good readers read more and steadily improve their skills, vocabulary, and knowledge, while poor readers avoid reading and therefore fail to progress.
- Problems at the level of reading individual words are the major source of reading difficulties and failures.
- When students must struggle to read words, they aren't able to focus on the meaning of the text.
- English is based on the alphabetic principle.
- Letters represent phonemes, but we don't hear individual phonemes when we speak.
- Phonemic awareness is one of the two best predictors of how well children will learn to read.
- Students can learn phonemic awareness through explicit, systematic instruction.
- Knowledge of letter names is the other best predictor of early reading achievement.
- Children's early experiences with reading are important for their understanding of reading as communication, conveyor of information, and source of pleasure.
- Decoding is an essential skill for beginning readers.
- Explicit, systematic phonics instruction helps children learn to read more effectively.
- Recognition of larger chunks such as phonograms, short words, syllables, and morphemes is necessary for fluent word recognition.
- To develop fluency, students need instruction, sufficient practice, and extensive opportunities to apply decoding strategies.
- Words that are read must then be associated with meaning.
- Comprehension is an active, purposeful process in which meaning is constructed through the interaction between reader and text (Durkin, 1993).
- Students need to know a variety of cognitive strategies to help them understand what they read.
- Students must know when and how to apply these strategies.
- Students with learning problems are less likely to discover and regulate cognitive strategies.
- Through systematic instruction and attention to skill generalization, students can learn and apply a variety of cognitive strategies that improve comprehension.
- Computers and other technologies are viewed as important tools for assisting special educators to provide effective literacy instruction.
- Computer software can help provide systematic, explicit instruction, multiple practice opportunities, and practice in a variety of contexts.
- Many programs are engaging and motivating, with game-like activities, animated illustrations, and audio presentation.
- Programs of computer instruction can be used to supplement the classroom curriculum.
- Technology can also be used to develop a holistic instructional curriculum around visually presented stories.
- Synthesized speech tools can help students by "reading" texts or definitions.
- Electronic books may offer pronunciations, definitions, supplementary material, visuals such as pictures and movies, strategy modeling, or reader prompting.
- Few empirically-based investigations provide proof that technology improves literacy acquisition or instruction.
- Very little attention has been given to how specific applications and practices could be integrated into a classroom-based program of literacy instruction.
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