National Early Literacy Panel Report (2008)

The National Reading Panel Report (NICHD, 2000) didn’t address best instructional practices for children from birth to age 5. Thus, the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP) was convened. The panel included experts in literacy and early childhood education.

Reading and writing skills have a clear and consistently strong relationship with later literacy skills. The following early literacy skill variables have medium to large predictive relationships with later measures of literacy development. These include:

• knowing the names and sounds of letters
• skills in auditory aspects of spoken language, independent of meaning
• rapid automatic naming of letters, numbers, objects, and colors
• writing letters or writing one’s name
• remembering spoken information for a short period of time

Five other early literacy skills (knowledge of print conventions and concepts, early decoding, reading readiness, oral language, and visual matching of symbols) were also moderately correlated with later literacy achievement.

The panel also set out to determine the effectiveness of instructional strategies, programs, or practices in teaching literacy skills to young children. These strategies include code-focused and shared reading interventions, parent and home programs, preschool and kindergarten programs, and language enhancement interventions. All strategies were found to improve children’s oral language skills; the most effective outcomes were evidenced through teacher-directed instruction delivered in small groups or one-on-one instruction.

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