Q: What is Get Ready to Read!?
A: 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. GRTR! is comprised of a screening tool that can assess the extent to which a four-year-old child has mastered key early literacy skills and activities that can help children master these skills. The screening tool and early literacy activities are easy-to-use, and available on the Website www.getreadytoread.org . NCLD's goal is to have all four-year-old children screened for early literacy skills and exposed to the specific skill-building activities that can help them gain the fundamental skills necessary for learning to read.

Q: Why is NCLD interested in early literacy?
A: Approximately 80 percent of children with learning disabilities have problems reading. Identifying problems children may have acquiring these skills early on is the key to preventing or minimizing the majority of school-age children's reading problems, regardless of the underlying cause for the problems.

Q: Why is early literacy screening important?
A: Research shows that learning to read is a process that begins long before children enter kindergarten. During the pre-kindergarten years, children develop the early literacy skills that help them to learn how to read during the first few years of elementary school. Early screening and intervention are the keys to overcoming reading difficulties and avoiding the problems that go along with them.

Q: What happens to children with reading disabilities?
A: The current approach to reading failure is remedial, not preventative, forcing students to evidence failure before receiving help. Yet a student who finishes second grade without being able to read has only a 1 in 4 chance of reading at grade level by the end of elementary school. This failure to read has lasting consequences. Thirty-five percent of children with reading disabilities drop out of school, a rate twice that of their classmates. Further, 25 percent of U.S. adults lack the basic literacy skills required for a typical job.

Q: What is the benefit of identifying these children early?
A: Early identification and intervention can reduce the need for costly services. If identified early and given research-based intervention, 90 to 95 percent of children "at risk" for reading failure will become fluent readers. This, in turn, can reduce the need for special education services later in a student's educational life.

Q: Who developed the screening tool?
A: The screening tool was developed by Grover (Russ) J. Whitehurst, Ph.D., and Christopher Lonigan, Ph.D., two of the nation's foremost education researchers.

Q: What are the key features of the screening tool?
A: Twenty easy-to-use items that sample print knowledge, emergent writing, and linguistic awareness skills"three areas identified by researchers as being the most critical for learning to read. The screening tool can be administered by a parent, preschool teacher, librarian, child care provider, or other early childhood professionals.

Q: Does the screening tool screen for learning disabilities?
A: No. The screening tool does not screen for learning disabilities. The child's total score on the screening tool is a snapshot of the extent to which he or she has mastered the skills in three core areas of early literacy.

Q: Does NCLD train parents and early childhood educators on how to use the tool?
A: NCLD staff are currently working with local service providers in six cities to advise educators and child care professionals about how to integrate GRTR! into their curricula and to teach parents why specific early literacy skills are so important.

Q: What is available on the Get Ready to Read! website?
A:The GRTR! Website, which recently won the 2004 Literacy in Media Award, offers three top-notch interactive games that feature Gus the Bunny from the award-winning PBS program Between the Lions. The games emphasize word recognition, letter names, letter sounds, rhyming, and blending letter sounds to make words. The Website also features a series of skill-building activity cards, GRTR! newsletters, information on how to build a strong reading environment in your home and school, and additional literacy resources. To help Spanish-speaking parents, information about the screening tool and the activity cards are also available in Spanish.

Q: What are the early warning signs of learning disabilities?
A: Learning disabilities are often hard to pinpoint in young children. Most children have some difficulties with learning and behavior from time to time. A parent should consider seeking further advice if a child has a clear or persistent pattern of problems with one or more of these behaviors during the early school years, and the problem persists over time:

To learn more about Get Ready to Read! and early literacy, visit the Get Ready to Read! Website and press center at www.getreadytoread.org .