In addition to attention in literacy instruction in kindergarten though third grade,

ensuring high-quality preschool and kindergarten program and literacy environment is

significantly important. Children who will probably need additional support for early

language and literacy development should receive it as early as possible.

Early literacy with at risk children

 Unfortunately, the current study demonstrated that, participants from two schools

(School 4 & 5) in low-SES neighborhoods showed significantly lower scores on reading

fluency skills compared to children from mid-SES neighborhoods (School 1, 2, & 5).

Through reviewing the current and previous reading research, it was recognized that there

are still many students who enter school without a strong literacy background. In

particular, reading researchers have demonstrated that children from low-income families

are less likely to have opportunities to build their basic literacy skills (Hart & Risley,

1995; Smith & Dixon, 1995; Whitehurst, 1996) and have higher risk for RD. Therefore,

researchers and practitioners have recognized that low socio-economic status (SES) may

be one of risk factors of RD, which is related to a lack of opportunity to learn.

 Hochenbergher, Goldstein, and Hass (1999) investigated whether teaching mothers

with low socioeconomic status (SES) to comment while reading to their children would

increase communicative interaction in mother--child dyads and improve the children s

emerging literacy skills. They reported that most mothers also increased other

conversational acts that set the occasion for positive verbal interactions and increased

their responsiveness to their children through the education sessions. In turns,all children

demonstrated more assertive and responsive utterances during the commenting

intervention and four out of the seven children showed improved emerging literacy skills

on a standardized. One way to achieve early literacy would be parent education for low