Description
Findings and Recommendations
Citations
Reading A-Z Alignment with Research
Reading A-Z Resources 

Return to top | Return to Research and Reading A-Z

Research Findings and Recommendations
Repeated oral reading that includes guidance from teachers, peers, or parents has a significant and positive impact on word recognition, fluency, and comprehension across a range of grade levels. 

Students should read often to practice the skills they have been taught. They should be given ample opportunity to practice reading books at their independent reading level. 

They should read a rich variety of books from a wide range of genres, and they should read developmentally appropriate materials. 

Parents can support their children's reading development by reading to their children, listening to their children read, and discussing what their children read.

Return to top | Return to Research and Reading A-Z

Citations

• All children should receive reading instruction using texts at their instructional reading level. A text in which a child can read 90 to 95 percent of the words accurately is considered instructionally appropriate. (Clay 1991: Fountas and Pinnell, 1996)  
• A book should be easy enough to develop a student’s confidence and facilitate understanding, but difficult enough to challenge without frustrating. (Clay, 1991) 
• Appropriate reading materials for emergent readers should contain meaningful and natural language patterns and many high-frequency words. (Hiebert, 1998)

Reading A-Z Alignment with Research Findings
Reading A-Z provides educators with a large collection of developmentally appropriate reading books spread over 27 levels of difficulty. The books have been written to strict leveling criteria and then further analyzed using software that rates each book using more than 20 factors of difficulty. 

The Leveled Readers use natural language in meaningful contexts at the early levels. They make repeated use of high-frequency words. The graduated difficulty of each level ensures that the reader is receiving his or her instruction with materials that adequately challenge without causing frustration. 

Reading A-Z allows teachers to download as many copies as necessary to meet their guided reading needs. Because teachers can download and assemble books for pennies apiece, students can keep the books and take them home for repeated reading. 

Each book is accompanied by a lesson built along the guided reading conventions of strategy instruction before, during, and after reading. 

Each Leveled Reader includes a quiz that covers literal, inferential, and critical/creative thinking questions. 

Reading A-Z provides two benchmarks books and running records for each reading level. These observational records of reading behavior allow a teacher to monitor student progress and guide instruction with developmentally appropriate materials.