National Reading Panel
In 1997, Congress asked the Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institutes of Health, in consultation with the Secretary of Education, to convene a national panel to assess the effectiveness of different approaches used to teach children to read.
For over two years, the NRP reviewed research-based knowledge on reading instruction and held open panel meetings in Washington, DC, and regional meetings across the United States. On April 13, 2000, the NRP concluded its work and submitted "The Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read," at a hearing before the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education.
The programs from Essential Skills Software closely follow the findings of this landmark study. They address the five key components to early reading identified in the study of the National Reading panel and subsequently adopted in the No Child Left Behind Act: Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary and Comprehension.
The six programs in the Early Literacy Suite from Essential Skills Software are Phonemic Awareness, Super-Phonics, Sight Words, Reading Comprehension, Fun With Spelling and Vocabulary Builder. These programs include hundreds of activities delivered in an interesting and engaging way to build the student's skills in the subject areas.
The following are a sample of the findings of the National Reading Panel:
- Scientific evidence shows that teaching children to manipulate the sounds in language (phonemes) helps them learn to read. This remains true under a variety of teaching conditions and with a variety of learners across a range of grade and age levels. The NRP concluded that teaching phonemic awareness to children significantly improves their reading when compared to instruction without any attention to phonemic awareness. Specifically, the results of experimental studies led the Panel to conclude that PA training led to improvement in students' phonemic awareness, reading, and spelling.
- The Panel determined that systematic phonics instruction leads to significant positive benefits for students in kindergarten through sixth grade and for children with difficulty learning to read. Kindergartners who receive systematic beginning phonics instruction read better and spell better than other children, and first graders are better able to decode and spell words. The students also show significant improvement in their ability to understand what they read. Similarly, phonics instruction helps older children spell and decode text better, although their understanding does not necessarily improve.
- Vocabulary development has long been considered important for reading comprehension. The Panel concluded that vocabulary should be taught both directly and indirectly. Repetition and seeing vocabulary words several times is also important. Learning in rich contexts, incidental learning, and the use of computer technology all help children develop larger vocabularies. A combination of methods, rather than a single teaching method, leads to the best learning.
- As with vocabulary development, text comprehension is improved when teachers use a combination of reading comprehension techniques such as question answering, question generation, and summarization. When students are able to use them successfully, they perform better in recall, answering questions, generating questions, and summarizing texts.
- The Panel found that intensive professional development is necessary so that teachers can learn to use reading comprehension strategies effectively. Preferably, teachers should receive formal instruction on strategies to teach reading comprehension as early as pre-service. More research is needed on a number of issues, including which components of teacher preparation are most effective.
For the complete findings of the National Reading Panel visit www.nichd.nih.gov |
