The purpose of this project is to develop an interdisciplinary approach to large-scale educational interventions that provides for the integration of research and education around issues involving the development of beginning reading skills.

This group proposal includes three studies centered around a large-scale comprehensive educational intervention in a large suburban school district. The participants will be 384 first grade children who vary in their risk for reading problems and type of instruction, and their teachers.

Goals and Purposes
Project 1: Intervention
Project 2: Brain Activation
Project 3: Decodability

These three projects provide an interdisciplinary team of reading educators, cognitive and developmental psychologists, neuroscientists, engineers, and methodologists who will partner with a large suburban school district to implement staff development, a large-scale intervention, and the two cognitive neuroscience investigations. From this research we will gain practical information on:

• identification and early intervention for children at-risk for reading difficulties

• components of instruction that impact the development of reading skills in young children

• the development of teacher knowledge and its link to instructional strategies for prevention and early intervention

• neural correlates of educational practice

• text decodability and its impact on student outcomes in reading