Early Reading Instruction With Embedded Behavioral Supports for Children With Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

Professional development in research-based early reading intervention and curriculum materials is not consistently available to special educators working with students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). This article provides practitioners serving elementary school students with and at risk for EBD with a variety of options for delivering reading instruction with embedded behavioral supports.

Well-established monolingual literacy predictors in bilinguals

An important component of early reading intervention is effective literacy screening tools. Literacy precursor screening tools have been primarily developed for early identification and remediation of potential reading difficulties in monolingual Englishspeaking children, despite the significant proportion of bilingual children worldwide. This systematic literature review examines whether the precursor literacy skills commonly used in monolingual English-speaking children have been assessed and found to predict later reading skills in simultaneous bilingual children. Our findings demonstrate that the nine major literacy precursors identified in monolingual children also significantly correlate with reading performance in simultaneous bilingual children. These nine literacy precursors are phonological awareness, letter knowledge, serial recall, oral language comprehension, vocabulary, grammar, memory, non-verbal intelligence and word decoding.

Developing an Early Reading Intervention Aligned With the Down Syndrome Behavioral Phenotype

The aim of this project was to develop an early reading intervention for children with Down syndrome based on the related behavioral phenotype. The intervention targeted learning of letter–sound correspondences, reading of decodable and high frequency words, and phonological awareness. We evaluated the feasibility and potential efficacy of the intervention with seven children between the ages of 6 and 8 years who participated in a series of multiple-probe across lessons single-case design studies. Results indicate a functional relation between the intervention and mastery of taught content for three students. Two students demonstrated positive although inconsistent response; two students demonstrated limited learning. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.