Panel (NELP, 2008) reviewed the literature on promoting young children’s early literacy skills from birth to age

Reading is a complex process and many d/Deaf and hard of hearing (d/Dhh) students have reading difficulties (Easterbrooks et al., 2008). Most students with severe to profound hearing loss graduate from a high school with approximately fourth-grade reading level (Paul et al., 2013; Qi & Mitchell, 2012; Traxler, 2000), and the annual growth of reading for d/Dhh students is 0.3 grade per year (Harris et al., 2017). However, it seems to be improving with recent advances in newborn hearing screening and hearing aid technologies (Harris et al., 2017; Mayer & Trezek, 2018). Two broad domains of code-related skills (e.g., phonemic awareness, letter names, grapheme-phoneme correspondence, and phonics) and language-related skills (e.g., morphology, semantics, and syntax) play a significant role in reading development and inadequacies in any of these areas contribute to poor reading achievement (Hoover & Gough, 1990; Luft, 2018; Mayer & Trezek, 2015). These two domains appear to have a differential influence on reading acquisition. For example, during the early stages of reading development, code-related skills play a critical role, but once the children learned the code, language-related skills become more influential (Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998). Two national reading reports found that code-related skills are critical for students’ early reading success (National Early Literacy Panel [NELP], 2008; National Reading Panel [NRP], 2000). The National Early Literacy Panel (NELP, 2008) reviewed the literature on promoting young children’s early literacy skills from birth to age 5 years and identified six variables that are strongly related to later conventional literacy skills: (a) alphabet knowledge; (b) phonological awareness; (c) rapid automatic naming of letters or digits; (d) rapid automatic naming of objects or colors; (e) writing or writing name; and (f) phonological memory. In addition, the National Reading Panel (NRP, 2000) found that phonemic awareness and phonics are the most important precursors of later reading success. They are highly correlated with each other and the most important aspects of early reading instruction. Phonemic awareness is defined as “the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in spoken words” (Armbruster et al., 2001, p. 1). Phonemic awareness instruction has greater effects on learning reading when combined with phonics instruction. The best way to teach phonemic awareness and phonics is through explicit and systematic instruction (NRP, 2000). According to the NRP, phonics programs have the greatest impact when they begin in kindergarten or first grade, instruction continues for 2 to 3 years, and all lesson delivery systems (i.e., tutoring, small group, or whole class) are effective. It is important to highlight that phonics instruction is not a complete reading program, and it should be integrated with other components of balanced reading instruction such as phonemic awareness, reading sight words, fluency, vocabulary, reading comprehension strategies, and enhanced language experiences (NRP, 2000). The NRP (2000) identified several different systematic and explicit phonics instruction programs. The results of the analysis demonstrated that all types of systematic phonics programs had statistically significant effects, but they did not differ from each other. However, the NRP particularly 1024536 CDQXXX10.1177/15257401211024536Communication Disorders QuarterlyKart research-article2021