What is Get Ready to Read!?
Get Ready to Read! (GRTR!) is an early literacy program designed to help parents and early child care providers ensure that young children are equipped with the fundamental skills necessary for learning to read. The goal of the initiative is to ensure that all young children become successful readers by:
- Screening the early literacy skills of four-year-olds to determine their familiarity with pre-reading concepts.
- Providing tools and educational opportunities to enable all children to become successful readers.
- Providing parents, early childhood professionals and caregivers with research-based information about how to build young children's pre-reading skills.
Get Ready to Read! is an initiative of the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD). Founded in 1977, NCLD runs one of the nation's broadest public education campaigns on learning disabilities and promotes the use of effective research-based instruction to help children overcome the challenges created by learning disabilities. NCLD has a special interest in emergent literacy skills due to the direct link between reading problems and learning disabilities.
Why is the Get Ready to Read! screening tool needed?
Learning to read and write begins very early in children's development, well before they enter kindergarten or first grade. Unfortunately, too many parents, early childhood educators and caregivers are not aware of the types of skills a preschool-age child needs to be ready to learn to read and write. Often, they also don't have any benchmarks against which to measure whether a child is making good progress. Intervening early is the key to preventing or minimizing the majority of school-age children's reading problems, regardless of the underlying cause for the problems.
Learning to read and write does not happen naturally without adult guidance. Children need:
- Regular exposure to and interaction with print,
- Rich oral and written language interactions with adults,
- Systematic, explicit instruction to develop and enhance skill mastery.
The screening tool investigates a child's skills related to print knowledge, emergent writing, and linguistic awareness. Together with vocabulary growth, these are the key predictors of early success in reading.
Why does NCLD have such a strong interest in reading?
While reading difficulties are caused by a multitude of factors, approximately 80 percent of children with learning disabilities have problems reading. If those children are not identified and provided with appropriate help, the results are startling:
- 75% of children with reading difficulties who have not been identified by age 9 (grade 4) will still have poor reading skills at the end of high school.
- 27% of children with learning disabilities drop out of school - a rate twice that of their classmates.
Screening children's early literacy skills can identify those who might be at future risk for learning disabilities. For parents, educators and caregivers, being aware of a child's early literacy skill level helps focus instruction and activities on those areas that need improvement. And teaching strategies that work for children with learning disabilities work for all children.
Who developed the screening tool?
NCLD turned to two of the nation's foremost education researchers to lead the development of the Get Ready to Read! screening tool:
- Grover (Russ) J. Whitehurst, Ph.D. served as the tool's developer. At the time he developed the tool, Dr. Whitehurst was Professor of Psychology & Pediatrics and Chairman of the Department of Psychology at SUNY Stony Brook. Since that time, he has been named Director of the Institute of Educational Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education.
- Christopher Lonigan, Ph.D. is the tool's co-developer and spearheaded the tool's Spanish translation. Dr. Lonigan is Associate Professor of the Department of Psychology at Florida State University.
In addition to the co-developers, the following researchers served as advisors to the development process:
- Jack Fletcher, PhD: Professor, Dept of Pediatrics, University of Texas-Houston
- Victoria Molfese, PhD: Director, Early Childhood Center, University of Louisville
- Joseph Torgesen, PhD: Distinguished Professor, Psychology & Education, Florida State University
What are the key features of the screening tool?
- Twenty easy-to-use items that sample print knowledge, emergent writing, and linguistic awareness skills - the three areas identified by more than 20 years of research as being the most critical for learning to read.
- Each item has four pictures and a question.
- Used by an adult working one-to-one with a child in a quiet environment. An adult reads the question and the child points to the answer s/he thinks is correct.
- Screening takes an average of 9 minutes to complete.
- May be used two or three times in the year before kindergarten, as long as there are several months between administrations.
- Results indicate a child's progress in developing the early literacy skills needed to learn how to read and write.
- Results enable adults to choose and adapt appropriate learning activities they do with a child to his or her level of development, based on screening results.
- The program provides skill-building learning activities to engage a child in a range of opportunities that build knowledge of letters, sounds, books, and print.
In what types of settings is the screening tool being used?
The screening tool is used in a wide variety of settings - schools, Head Start centers, libraries, religiously affiliated institutions, Native American reservations, and community centers.The tool was developed so that any adult can administer it - parents, preschool teachers, librarians, child care providers, and other early childhood professionals To ensure maximum reach of the program, NCLD is working with a network of locally based early childhood professionals to screen large numbers of children. Large-scale trainings of professionals are underway in numerous states. Smaller scale trainings take place on an ongoing basis in communities throughout the country. Each of our sites receives training in the use of the tool, follow-up consultation to answer questions, and information on additional resources to assist in building pre-reading skills.
For more information, contact Karen Golembeski, Assistant Director, Programs, at
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