Years ago, some advised waiting until third grade to get extra reading help to see whether the child would grow out of it.

Now experts advise stepping in as soon as a reading problem occurs.

“The research over the last 30 years really lays out very clearly you can’t start too early. I wouldn’t hesitate, if I were running a preschool, to try to address these kids’ needs,” said Dr. Timothy Shanahan, immediate past president of the International Reading Association and a professor of urban education at the University of Illinois at Chicago…

A child who is four or five months behind at the end of first grade has only one chance in five or six of ever reading at grade level in a typical school environment, said Joseph Torgesen, director emeritus of the Florida Center for Reading Research at Florida State University…

Rosanne Javorsky, senior program director for curriculum and instruction at the Reading Achievement Center at the Allegheny Intermediate Unit, said educators used to wait because they thought the children weren’t developmentally ready to learn.

Now, however, she said experts know that “waiting will not produce the desired outcome for kids.” …

Ms. Javorsky said there’s hope for struggling early readers. “A lot of the research shows that if you intervene early and intensively you can actually make a difference for those kids. If you don’t, it becomes much harder as the kids get older.” …

“I can’t stress enough to read to your babies as soon as they’re born, if not before. It helps them develop the ability to read so much more easily,” said Laurie Moser, director of Read! 365, which is a campaign of Beginning with Books.

“Children who have been read to and talked to since a very young age have heard more than 30 million words by age 3. They have a vocabulary of up to 20,000 words by age 6. That gives them a great head start.” …

“The longer you go as a poor reader, the more practice you miss out on. This practice builds vocabulary. It builds reading strategies and it builds fluency,” Dr. Torgesen said…

Source: Pittsburgh Post Gazette, PA
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07239/812394-42.stm