This document outlines principles and strategies for teaching economically disadvantaged children to read. It recommends building background knowledge, creating an atmosphere of success, making instruction explicit, and providing a balanced program of basic skills and real-world applications. Assessment methods are described, including measuring comprehension, vocabulary, and fluency. Strategies are presented for integrating reading and writing into classroom activities through dramatic play centers and dedicated reading time.

1. Principles for Teaching
Economically
isadvantaged
Children

2. 1. Build Background
 Limited income generally
mean limited travel and lack
of opportunity for vacations,
and other expensive activities.

3. 2. Create an Atmosphere of
Success
 Teachers sometimes
emphasize problems, not
success
 Teachers must maintain
visions of success for
students

4. 3. Make Instruction Explicit
 Disadvantaged students must
have better teaching

5. 4. Provide a Balanced
Program
 They need basic skills and
strategies
 These skills should be taught in
context with plenty of opportunity
to apply them to high-quality
reading materials and real life

6. Assessment
 Miscues – an oral response that
differs from the expected
(correct) response
 Miscues: mispronunciations,
omissions, insertions, and word
supplied by the examiner

7. Causes of Poor Comprehension
 Inadequate background
knowledge
 Difficulty with vocabulary
 Difficulty with syntax
 Overuse of background
knowledge

8. Causes of Poor Comprehension
 Failure to link ideas in a passage
 Failure to make inferences

9. CURRICULUM-BASED
MEASURES
 Frequently recommended for
screening and progress
monitoring
 It measures overall indicators of
proficiency

10. Emergent and Early
Reading CBMs
 Measures students’ ability to
name letters of the alphabet, give
the sounds represented by letters
of the alphabet, identify the first
sound of a spoken word, read
high-frequency (sight) words

11. Letter Name Fluency
 Students name as many letters
as they can within 1 minute.
 Students are asked to point to
the letter as they say its name.
 Automaticity of the students’
response is being assessed.

12. First Sound Fluency
 The assessor says a word, and
the student is asked to say the
first sound for the word:
“What sound does man begin
with?”

13. Phoneme Segmentation Fluency
 Given a spoken word, students
are asked to say all the sounds
for the word.
 Example: The tester pronounces
the word stop, and the student is
expected to say “/s/,/t/,/o/,/p/”

14. Letter Sound Fluency
 Assess students’ ability to provide
the sounds typically represented by
letters shown in isolation.
 Limits students to 1 minute to
indicate their automaticity or fluency,
and speed
 Short vowels, consonants, digraphs
ch and sh

15. Word Reading Fluency
 Students are given a list of 50 to
100 high-frequency words and
are asked to read as many words
as they can in 1 minute

16. Maze Passage
 If you want to see one kind of kangaroo,
you have to look up. One kind of
kangaroo lives in (foods, trees, even).
The tree kangaroo is small, but
(it,that,from) has an extra-long tail. It
(and,also,in) has long curved claws. The
long (tail, fruit, move) and sharp claws
help it to (climb, eat, to) trees.

17. Maze Passage
 The tree kangaroo is a good (person,
jumper, up). It can leap 30 feet from
(good, one, is) tree branch to another or
(even, faster, and) from one tree to
another. It (look, can, small) also jump as
much as 60 (claws, as, feet) to the
ground. But on (kind, another, ground)
the tree kangaroo hops slowly.

18. Maze Passage
 It (only, quickly, long) hops about as
fast as a (person, bird, main) walks.
Trees are good places for (see,
which, the) tree kangaroo. They can
move much (faster, smaller, it) in
trees. Besides, their main food
(is,want,also) tree leaves. But they
also eat (branch,fruit,sharp) and

19. Maze Passage
 sometimes will even eat small
(places, birds, to). In addition, being
in a tree helps (keep, jump, but) tree
kangaroos safe from enemies.

20. Essential Skills and Understanding for
Emergent Literacy
Children need to construct basic concepts
of print:
 What we say and what others say can be
written down and read.
 Words, not pictures, are read
 Sentences are made up of words, and
words are made up of letters

21. Essential Skills and Understanding for
Emergent Literacy
Children need to construct basic concepts
of print:
 In English, reading goes from left to right
and from top to bottom
 A book is read from front to back in
English
 What we say is divided into words.

22. Essential Skills and Understanding for
Emergent Literacy
Children need to construct basic concepts
of print:
 Space separates written words
 Sentences begin with capital letters
 Sentences end with periods, question
marks, or exclamation marks
 A book has a title, an author, and
sometimes illustrator

23. Essential Skills and Understanding for
Emergent Literacy
Children need to construct basic concepts
of print:
 Students must also develop phonological
awareness and arrive at an understanding of
the alphabetic principle (being able to detect
separate words in a sentence, to separate
syllables in a word, to segment words into their
separate sounds, and to perceive beginning,
ending and medial sounds.

24. Making Reading and Writing a Part of
Classroom Activities
Dramatic Play Center is
recommended to be supplied
with pens, pencils, note pads,
diaries, cookbooks, telephone
books, picture books, magazines,
catalogs, and newspapers.

25. Making Reading and Writing a Part of
Classroom Activities
Dramatic Play Opportunities:
1. Grocery store – creating signs, writing checks or
food lists
2. Bank – writing deposits and withdrawal slips, and
checks
3. Doctor’s office – writing prescriptions, making
appointments, making bills
4. Restaurant – writing and reading menus, taking food
orders, creating signs
5. Post office – writing letters, addressing letters,
mailing packages, selling stamps, delivering mail

26. Making Reading and Writing a Part of
Classroom Activities
At least 20 minutes a day should
be set aside for reading aloud,
and this period should be held at
a regularly scheduled time
(book/ebook)