"Read Me a Story, Mom"

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Abstract
Four mildly delayed children, aged four to six years, were taught to identify either letters of the alphabet or sets of basic sight words during story-reading times conducted by their mothers at home. The sets of letters or words were trained in a multiple baseline design. Acquisition of the trained letters or words was assessed by their teacher at school through weekly pretests and posttests. Results demonstrated that preliminary reading skills could be taught successfully at home during a story-reading time; posttest data indicated that children generalized their new skills to school and maintained them through a two-month follow-up period. Furthermore, substantial gains by two of the children on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test suggest that additional benefits, such as increases in receptive vocabulary, may result from the daily story reading.