LETRS Unit 1 Supplemental Handouts|very helpful

Even one-year-olds comprehend much of what is said by others. Most children generate simple sentences by the time they are 16 to 24 months of age. The few children known to scientists who did not learn to speak in early childhood, such as the French “Wild Boy of Aveyron” and the closet child, Genie (Curtis, 1977),* were almost totally isolated from other people during their critical early years. Neither recovered normal language function later in life. The progression of typical reading development begins around age five and continues for about six years until full reading fluency is achieved. Sophisticated reading comprehension is the goal of 8 to 16 more years of schooling. Most students need instruction, practice, and incremental learning to read proficiently at advanced levels. The Connection between Language and Literacy Language proficiency and reading, spelling, and writing achievement are strongly related to one another, especially after fourth grade. Much evidence converges on the fact that students with delayed or poor language acquisition will very likely be poor readers and writers (Catts, Adlof, & Weismer, 2006). Conversely, students with strong verbal skills are more likely than others to compensate for any problems learning to read printed words (Kilpatrick, 2015). Facility with language and verbal reasoning—or lack thereof—places an upper limit on how well students will comprehend what they read (Torgesen et al., 2001). Listening comprehension may exceed reading comprehension, but the reverse is not true. One cannot understand by reading what one cannot understand by listening. Therefore, oral language development, vocabulary enrichment, and verbal-reasoning skills are critical components of classroom literacy instruction from the outset. One study of 1,350 students in 127 urban classrooms in grades 1–4 (Mehta, Foorman, Branum-Martin, & Taylor, 2005) examined the extent to which word reading, spelling, and comprehension are related to one another and to general language competence. The study also examined how teacher effectiveness and