High correlations exist for students who struggle with reading and math, and as a consequence, students who are poor readers tend to do poorly in mathematics. A few studies have investigated the longitudinal growth of the correlation between reading and mathematics. This dissertation outlines the investigation of the relation between reading foundational skills and growth in mathematics achievement for students at risk for reading difficulty and not at risk. This study used extant data from a second grade interim-benchmark reading assessment and a mathematics interim-benchmark for students in third through fifth grade. This study employed a staged approach for the latent growth curve model and discovered estimated differences of students with and without reading difficulties in relation to mathematics achievement. In addition, specific foundational skills were predictive of growth in mathematics for students with and without reading difficulties. The dissertation study developed a theory based on empirical research that early reading skills may lay the foundation for later mathematics achievement.

This study focused upon the established importance of the reading-writing relationship and its posited effect on literacy development. A repeated-measures experimental design investigated the effects of interactive writing instruction on 151 kindergarten students’ acquisition of early reading skills. Multilevel modeling was used to evaluate the impact of the reading-writing relationship as operationalized with interactive writing and writing workshop on the acquisition of early reading skills as repeated outcome measures at four points in time (Level 1) were clustered within students (Level 2). Results of this study indicated that instruction grounded in the reading-writing relationship, namely, interactive writing and writers’ workshop combined with existing reading instruction, led to equal growth in kindergarteners’ acquisition of early reading skills for each of the outcome measures at each of the four time points assessed. The growth effects obtained from the use of the reading-writing instructional treatments used in this study compared with the national normative samples from the outcome measures indicated that the reading-writing instruction significantly increased the rate of growth for the early reading skills of phonemic awareness, alphabet knowledge, and word reading.

Studies of preschool children have shown early speech and language deficits in children with cleft lip and/or palate (CLP). For some children, the deficits during kindergarten diminish as they begin school while some children continue to show delays. The purpose of this study was to determine if a relationship exists between speech and language skills and early reading skills of phonological awareness, letter identification, and rapid naming in children with and without CLP. The subjects, four kindergarten children with and four without CLP, were administered a battery of speech, language, early reading skills, and nonverbal cognition measures. Two-way analysis of variance for groups and matched pairs and correlational analyses were performed. The results revealed that the cleft group performed poorer than the noncleft group on most of the speech, language, and early reading measures. Significant correlations were found between the speech and grammatical language measures and the early reading measures.

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