NEW YORK, NY. AUGUST 15, 2006 -There are not enough hours in a teaching day. Teachers are always pressed for time. The demands of the classroom day, as well as federal and state requirements, can at times be overwhelming.

Most everyone would agree that the ability to read is the gateway to further learning and academic success. Yet until recently, there had been little research or consensus about "priority skills" -those most essential for students to learn if they are going to grow as readers, says Dr. Sharon Vaughn, a professor and reading and language arts expert at the University of Texas, and program author for Pearson Scott Foresman's elementary reading program, Reading Street.

But haven't teachers always known what's important for reading-like phonics and learning the alphabet?

In general, the answer is yes because teachers have always recognized the important elements of reading-for instance: being able to name letters.

Unfortunately, research had never been sophisticated enough to help teachers to refine how they teach those elements. Furthermore, teachers were in the dark about exactly when students needed to possess each priority skill.

According to Dr. Vaughn, we now know that teachers should be emphasizing very specific skills at precise ages and grade levels:

• The priority for kindergarteners is to be able to hear the sounds of our language and map these sounds to print (the alphabet).
• From here, kindergarteners must be able to acquire other foundational skills-learning to blend sounds into words and irregular words.
• In the first grade, the priority skill is, again, phonemic awareness for those students who haven't quite mastered it.
• But by the middle of first grade, the focus shifts away to phonics, fluency and comprehension.

This ability to calibrate and focus benefits everyone. Teachers can more wisely spend their time by knowing what is important to emphasize. They also have the tools to monitor progress in a way that really matters. When a student is falling behind, teachers can more easily intervene to ensure a student masters the priority skill before moving on to the next one, says Dr. Vaughn.

Students benefit because they become grounded in fundamentals that provide the stepping-stones to the next grade, where they continue to progress toward a more sophisticated reading ability.

Maximizing instructional time and zeroing in on priorities isn't a shortcut. It's a smarter, more effective way to boost reading for beginning readers, Dr. Vaughn says.

ABOUT DR. VAUGHN: Dr. Sharon Vaughn is the H.E. Hartfelder/The Southland Corporation Regent Professor, University of Texas; Director of the Vaughn Gross Center for Reading and Language Arts at the University of Texas, where she leads more than five major initiatives, including the Central Regional Reading First Technical Assistance Center; and is a Program Author for Pearson Scott Foresman's Elementary Reading program, Reading Street.

Contacts:

Pearson Education Communications
1-800-745-8489
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