Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel

Author: National Early Literacy Panel
Publisher: National Institute for Literacy
Publication Date: 2008, December
Full text available online at: http://www.nifl.gov/nifl/publications/pdf/NELPSummary.pdf

Abstract (written by WestEd)

To identify specific practices that promote the development of children's early literacy skills, the National Early Literacy Panel conducted meta-analyses of approximately 500 research articles. The six early literacy skills that are both correlated with later literacy and that maintain their predictive power when other important contextual variables, such as IQ and socioeconomic status, are taken into account, are as follows:

1. Alphabet knowledge—both the names and sounds
   
2. Phonological awareness of auditory aspects of spoken language
   
3. Rapid automatic naming of letters or digits
   
4. Rapid automatic naming of objects or colors
   
5. Writing letters in isolation or writing one's own name on request
   
6. Phonological memory of spoken information

The review of the research literature also identifies instructional practices that enhance early literacy skills. Of these practices, only "code-focused interventions"—those designed to teach children skills related to cracking the alphabetic code—were found to be effective in improving literacy skills; however, this finding may be due to the lack of measures of educational outcomes in studies utilizing other types of literacy interventions.

To download the full text version of the report, go to Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel.