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The complexities of words in different subject areas increase as students transition from elementary school to middle school. Although most secondary school readers can read monosyllabic words, many other older readers have difficulty with reading multisyllabic words because of their poor phonological and morphological skills. Explicit word‐reading instruction, focused on syllabic and morphemic analyses of multisyllabic words, therefore should be considered for advancing older struggling readers’ word‐reading skills. Results from word‐reading interventions have shown that analyses of syllables and morphemes in multisyllabic words advance older struggling readers’ phonological and morphological skills. Proficiency in recognizing syllables and morphemes in multisyllabic words then promotes older struggling readers’ accurate reading of complex words. Therefore, reading instruction for struggling older readers should focus on using syllable and morpheme analyses for promoting their multisyllabic word reading.

The authors examined the results of a three-year summer intervention, Dig Into Reading, for pre-first-grade through pre-third-grade students. This partnership among university professors, public school Title I teachers, and primary classroom teachers resulted in the development of research-based, copyright-free, replicable summer reading intervention materials. The four-year study involved collecting baseline data in year 1, then implementing the program, which progressed from sending 100 bags home with struggling pre-first-grade readers in year 2 to adding 100 bags for pre-second graders in year 3 (100 pre-first-grade and 100 pre-second-grade bags) and adding pre-third graders in year 4 (100 pre-first-grade, 100 pre-second-grade, and 100 pre-third-grade bags). The results of the Dig Into Reading intervention showed that participating students retained at least 30%–67% more reading ability based on reading level than did students in the baseline group who did not participate.

This department highlights some of the foundational aspects of early reading and literacy instruction. Building on research‐based practices, it offers readers a new way to look at early reading and literacy.

The purpose of this article is to rethink how sight words are categorized in early childhood classrooms. Three categories of words (regularly spelled, temporarily irregularly spelled, and permanently irregularly spelled) are presented as a way to think about the orthographic representations of words and how these representations interact with students’ grapheme–phoneme knowledge. Five kindergarten students were trained on explicit grapheme–phoneme mapping of 10 regularly spelled sight words during eight sessions lasting approximately 10 minutes each. Results demonstrated significant improvement from pretest to posttest on reading target words (p = 0.013, Cohen's d = 1.93) and nontarget words (p = 0.005, Cohen's d = 1.93). These preliminary findings indicate that the use of the categorization scheme based on student knowledge coupled with direct and explicit instruction of words that were previously taught as whole units may be an efficient and effective instructional method for securing regularly spelled sight words in memory.

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically affected U.S. schools since March 2020. K–12 schools have put in place various forms of remote learning to continue the education of students. In trying times like these, young students face unique unprecedented challenges. Often, they need parents’ and/or guardians’ supervision and guidance at home. How can teachers work with young students and their parents or guardians to ensure high-quality and equitable teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic? More specifically, how can teachers support young students’ word study from home during trying times? An ABC scavenger hunt can be a great activity to support young students’ word study while bridging home and school and fostering a positive home learning environment. We share teaching tips developed by a first-grade teacher over the past several months.

Sight word learning occurs in most early elementary classrooms. Some kindergarten students face the prospect of learning up to 100 sight words, and many teachers feel pressure to ensure that students know lists of words by the year's end. The authors offer five assertions about sight word learning to direct teachers and administrators toward the research behind word learning and building an early reading vocabulary. The discussion includes how we learn words, how teachers can choose words for early readers, how teachers can ensure that the words stick, and how teachers can choose instructional activities around sight word learning.

For many teachers, the term scaffolding has come to mean providing just the right amount of help when a student encounters difficulty. However, there is another facet of scaffolding that has been largely ignored, and that is making decisions about what to focus on to help the student. In this article, new research findings are shared about both types of scaffolding and the role they play in helping beginning readers solve new words while reading connected text. Suggestions are provided for how teachers can use these findings to more effectively scaffold young students’ word solving attempts as they read a new book with teacher help.

Decoding, building fluency, and exploring word and sentence meanings are important elements of literacy instruction in elementary classrooms. Shared literacy experiences provide opportunities for teachers to engage students in meaningful reading experiences. This article describes a quick four‐step process for conducting close sentence reading, a shared literacy experience focused on decoding and comprehending short excerpts of challenging text. Classroom examples and a sample excerpt and chart are included.

The teaching approach described in this article was originally designed for kindergarten students who are at risk for reading disorders. In a 30‐minute session, students practiced attending to and identifying the spelling patterns, pronunciations, and meanings of common morphological suffixes through listening activities, interactive book reading, and word sorts. A sample of kindergarten students with low early reading skills who received this intervention made large treatment gains in word reading, morphological awareness, and spelling after 12 hours of total instruction. These small‐group activities can be incorporated into teachers’ existing literacy instruction or provided as part of intensive intervention for at‐risk students. A list of books appropriate for targeting five common suffixes is provided.

The author reviews theory and research by Ehri and her colleagues to document how a scientific approach has been applied over the years to conduct controlled studies whose findings reveal how beginners learn to read words in and out of text. Words may be read by decoding letters into blended sounds or by predicting words from context, but the way that contributes most to reading and comprehending text is reading words automatically from memory by sight. The evidence shows that words are read from memory when graphemes are connected to phonemes. This bonds spellings of individual words to their pronunciations along with their meanings in memory. Readers must know grapheme–phoneme relations and have decoding skill to form connections, and must read words in text to associate spellings with meanings. Readers move through four developmental phases as they acquire knowledge about the alphabetic writing system and apply it to read and write words and build their sight vocabularies. Grapheme–phoneme knowledge and phonemic segmentation are key foundational skills that launch development followed subsequently by knowledge of syllabic and morphemic spelling–sound units. Findings show that when spellings attach to pronunciations and meanings in memory, they enhance memory for vocabulary words. This research underscores the importance of systematic phonics instruction that teaches students the knowledge and skills that are essential in acquiring word-reading skill.