Other Resources
Literacy Information and Communication System (LINCS)
The Literacy Information and Communication System offers information about the effective teaching of reading for children, adolescents, and adults based on the evidence from quality research. Explore this site for information on the research, principles about reading instruction suggested by the research, and products for parents, teachers, administrators, and policymakers.
Evidence-Based Program Evaluations
The What Works Clearinghouse is the “gold standard” for randomized controlled trial evaluations of programs and practices.
The Best Evidence Encyclopedia from Johns Hopkins University provides reliable reviews of empirically validated programs and materials.
The Florida Center for Reading Research website is loaded with great information, especially for professional developers and others interested in topics related to early intervention and prevention. Nationally recognized literacy experts – including Joe Torgesen, Rick Wagner, and Chris Lonigan – have posted research articles, book chapters, and recent professional presentations.
Reading First Initiative
Reading First is an ambitious national initiative to help every young child in every state become a successful reader. This effort is based on high expectations for what can and should happen for all students: that instructional decisions will be guided by the best available research. Two excellent Reading First publications are available for download from the U.S. Department of Education website, Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read and Put Reading First: Helping Your Children Learn to Read.
Guidelines for Teaching Reading
Training educators to teach reading can no longer be confined to one-session inservice workshops funded by a publisher. Instead, teachers must be properly instructed over time and given day-to-day opportunities in school to review and practice the best ways to help children read. That is the essence of Every Child Reading: A Professional Development Guide, a companion piece to the Learning First Alliance’s 1998 landmark report, “Every Child Reading: An Action Plan.”
Strengthen Home-School Literacy Connections
A Compact for Reading is a written agreement among families, teachers, principals, and students to work together to help improve the reading skills of kindergarten through third grade children. Two publications, A Compact for Reading Guide and the School-Home Links Reading Kit, are designed to help set reading goals and provide lessons and activities that allow children to accomplish these goals. The Compact for Reading, published in 1999, was a joint project of the US Department of Education, the Corporation for National Service, the Los Angeles Times, and Little Planet Learning.
Books and Beyond is a reading incentive program created specifically to improve student attitudes toward reading and to foster a love of books. Designed to help each and every child enjoy positive recreational reading experiences, Books and Beyond provides strategies that help teachers and schools create an exciting atmosphere where reading is the “in” thing to do. Parents are an integral part of Books and Beyond and are encouraged to read aloud to their children and to build home literacy behaviors. In addition, a television viewing component helps students and their parents become more aware of their TV habits.
Overcoming Dyslexia
Overcoming Dyslexia is a book by noted Yale researcher Sally Shaywitz, M.D., that provides a summary of reading problems and what can be done to solve them. The book is especially written for parents, teachers, and the lay public. In the Q&A in Scholastic’s Parent & Child magazine, Dr. Shaywitz offers new facts and new hope about how every young child can become a better reader.