Preface 4
Prologue: A Little Late, Kids Who Start Reading 12

Part 1: Understanding Early Literacy Education 23

Chapter 1: Literacy and Literacy Education 25
1 What is Literacy? 25
2 The gap between literacy education and literacy development 32

Chapter 2: Developmental Literacy and Early Literacy Education 40
1. Development of Reading and Writing and Developmental Literacy 40
2 The Meaning of Early Literacy Education 54

Chapter 3: A Paradigm Shift to Close the Literacy Gap 62
1 Misconceptions and Truths About Korean Language Education 62
2 From Korean language education to early literacy education 66

Part 2: Solutions for Early Literacy Education: Catch-Up Reading 75

Chapter 4: Understanding Gaps in Early Literacy Development 77
1 Different Levels of Reading 78
2 A Look at the Reading Function That Brings Up the Gap 82
3 Understanding the Interactions Between Skills and the Integration of Reading Development 96

Chapter 5: Reading Disorder: Existential Understanding and an Integrative Approach 99
1 Reading Disability, Dyslexia, or Reading Difficulty? 99
2. The Need for Existential and Individual Understanding and an Integrated Approach 108

Chapter 6: The Direction and Problematic Reality of Education for Underachieving Children 118
1. Shift to Early Prevention Education 118
2 The Problematic Reality of Educating Underachieving Children 122

Finding Answers in Chapter 7 Reading Recovery 131
1 The Beginning of Reading Recovery 131
2. Features and Implications of North American Leading Recovery 133

Chapter 8: Korean Reading Recovery, Reading Catch-Up Program 140
1. Overview of Reading Catch-Up 140
2. A Seed Fallen in the Desert of Korean Public Education: Catch Up on Reading 146

Part 3: The Practice of Running a Catch-Up Program 153

Chapter 9: Catch-Up Reading Approach and Guiding Principles 155
1 Reading Catch-Up Approach 155
2 Reading Catch-Up Guiding Principles 158

Chapter 10: Running a Reading Catch-Up Program 169
1. Identifying the target audience 169
2 Stay at your child's eye level 176
3 Patterned Lessons 189
4 End of Reading Catch-Up Program 243

Growth of Teachers, Students, and Schools through Part 4 Reading Catch-Up 247

Chapter 11: Changing Perspectives on Learning Disability 249
1. A teacher who was happy because he didn't know much, and a childhood when he was a struggling learner. 251
2 Faced with an unsolvable problem 256
258 after meeting the 3 Reading Catch-up Training
4 New Considerations for Elementary School Literacy Education 261

Chapter 12: Children I Met in Class 264
Jun, a first-grader who refused to hold a pencil due to painful memories from kindergarten, 265
269 ​​Duri, a second-grader who spent a long time in the hospital from the age of 5 to 8
3. Second-year student Hoon, who can read but wonders why he can't write. 274
4. Second grade mini 280, who said that studying was too difficult and life was difficult.
5. Second grader Jjang 285, whose name was written as "poor reading" in the notes section of the child register.
6. Little Jang, the younger brother of Jang and a first grader with the lowest reading level. 288
6th graders meet again at the lowest reading level after 2nd graders Q 292

Chapter 13: Beyond Individual Practice: A Prelude to Policy-Making: Experiments 298
1 Reading Catch-Up Overview of PDS 301
2 2020, Reading Catch-up PDS Experiment 303
3. Confirming the Feasibility of Building Regional Centers and Ensuring Accountability for Public Education 308
4 The Most Important Step to Get Started 312

Epilogue: Teachers Who Start Reading Catch-Up a Little Late 317

Appendix 1 Daily Class Record 322
Appendix 2 Norms for Early Literacy Screening Tools 325
Appendix 3: Level Assessment Criteria for 'Book Footprint K-2' 333
Appendix 4 Reading Process Analysis Record 334
Reference 337
Search 347

Reading difficulties in early school age
Limits academic success and amplifies failure throughout the school life.
Early literacy skills that determine a child's life

Literacy develops throughout the lifespan, from early childhood through old age, but the early elementary grades are a particularly critical period for literacy development.
Failure to learn literacy in the early elementary years has a critical impact on subsequent literacy development in the later elementary years, adolescence, and adulthood.
In fact, children who show high achievement in reading at an early age are said to show excellent reading skills later in life, while children who experience reading learning failure before 3rd or 4th grade are very likely to have reading difficulties throughout their lives.
This means that children who fall behind in literacy skills and fail to reach the average level of their peers before second grade are more likely to continue to experience learning difficulties as they grow up.


Reading difficulties in the first and second grades of elementary school are even more critical because they can lead to gaps in overall academic performance.
Lack of literacy often leads to difficulties in learning not only Korean but also all subjects.
Moreover, children who have difficulty reading and writing, who cannot read textbooks, and who cannot understand what their teachers say gradually lose interest and confidence in their studies.
Self-directed learning is a distant prospect for children who are trapped in the mindset that they can't do anything and are afraid of reading and writing.


Based on recent research on literacy development, this book emphasizes that early literacy education and support should begin in the early elementary grades.
Literacy doesn't begin to develop after children enter elementary school.
Children develop basic reading skills from a very young age through interactions with their surroundings and adults.
In other words, children entering school have already gone through the early literacy development process, and by the time they reach the lower grades of elementary school, this has reached a point where it is fully developed.
For the sake of a child's future learning and future, it is important to not miss this period and to develop the necessary literacy skills during early childhood.

Children's starting line is not the same.
To help children who start out behind their peers
Practical literacy education

Children's reading levels vary greatly when they enter school.
Because early literacy develops in diverse ways from the moment of birth in each child's literacy environment, first graders are not at the same starting point in terms of literacy development.
In a first-grade classroom, there are children who can read and write fluently, but there are also children who can't write words other than their own names, children who can't pronounce letters out loud, children who are afraid of reading and writing and refuse to hold a pencil, and children who eventually say that studying is so difficult that life is difficult.


This leads to the problem that it is difficult to ensure literacy for all children in the same class.
Teachers who have to teach the entire class have no choice but to conduct classes at a level that matches the middle level of the class.
Ultimately, all children at different starting points end up studying and taking classes with the same books, at the same pace, and following the same curriculum.
As a result, children who start out already behind their peers experience accumulated reading difficulties as they advance through the grades, their academic performance worsens, and they have problems adjusting to school and forming relationships with peers.


Closing the gap in early literacy requires one-on-one, individualized instruction for children who struggle with reading and do not adapt to classroom instruction.
The Reading Catch-Up program presented in this book takes the approach of providing individualized educational support to children who are lagging behind before their literacy problems become more severe, thereby bringing them up to the average level.

The solution to elementary literacy introduced in EBS's "Your Literacy"!
Unable to read, unable to understand the meaning of what is read,
Reading Catch-Up Program for Children Who Struggle with Reading

EBS's "Your Literacy," which highlighted the importance of literacy in Korean society, introduced the Reading Catch-Up Program as a solution to address the literacy gap among school-age children and demonstrated the surprising changes brought about by the Reading Catch-Up class.
Children who were unable to read or understand the lessons improved their reading and writing skills, had higher academic self-esteem, and became familiar with reading after 30 minutes of individualized instruction per day for 12 to 20 weeks.
The goal and method of the Reading Catch-Up Program is to effectively build early literacy skills in early elementary school students by providing successful and practical learning at the child's eye level.

This book explains in detail the principles, guidance principles, and specific teaching methods of the Reading Catch-Up Program.
The most important principle of the reading catch-up program is to 'start with the child.'
The causes and characteristics of reading difficulties vary from child to child.
Reading catch-up prioritizes and listens to each child's subjective reading experience.
We closely observe each child's current level and developmental path to accurately diagnose them, identify any problems or difficulties they are experiencing, and design and implement personalized education that is optimized for each child.


Many reading programs for struggling children teach children consonants and vowels in order and practice repeating unfamiliar letters or words.
However, repetitive training solely for learning can rob children of fun and achievement, and can cause them great difficulties and frustrations that are difficult to overcome.
In contrast, the Reading Catch-Up program helps children learn to read and write by reading sentences they can read and writing sentences they want to write.
Because children's reading and writing skills develop rapidly when they engage in practical learning with words and sentences that are meaningful to them.
Catch-up reading lessons based on real-world reading and real-world writing quickly close the reading gap by stimulating children's interest and motivation and promoting accelerated development.


The process of the reading catch-up program can be summarized as 'identifying the target audience - staying at the child's eye level - patterned lessons - program termination.'
Observational assessments are conducted in classroom learning situations, and the target students are identified through initial literacy tests, and 60 to 100 classes are conducted for 30 minutes each per day.
And at the end of the class, we conduct another observation evaluation to check whether the students are participating in the classroom lessons at the class average level, and analyze the results of the initial literacy test to decide whether and when to end the program.
This book provides a detailed explanation of the process and procedures of the reading catch-up program, along with actual classroom scenes.


“I was an illiterate person,
“Now I am a person who can read books on my own.”
Just 30 minutes of class a day can change a child's life.

This book began with the passion and dedication of Professor Eom Hoon of Cheongju National University of Education.
Since discovering the "illiterates in schools" who cannot read even when they read more than a decade ago, Eom Hoon has been persistently exploring the theory and practical methods of early literacy education.
The result of that persistent research and practice is the Reading Catch-Up Program.
After repeated teacher training and material development, Reading Catch-Up, which began to be recognized as an early literacy education program for struggling readers, is currently being implemented across the country as of 2022.


Recently, elementary literacy has been receiving attention throughout society.
However, on the other hand, we see people lamenting the decline in children's literacy skills by saying that they do not know this or that word, or pushing children to solve more worksheets.
Instead of serious consideration and action to fundamentally solve the problem, we are seeing the burden of private education products called literacy enhancement and parents being responsible for their children's education.
As the recommendation states, “This book shows that surprisingly, the starting point of the literacy issue in Korean society was practice,” this book confronts head-on the responsibility of public education to eliminate the literacy gap.
And it suggests a solution to the challenges of early literacy education by fostering the expertise of teachers who meet and guide children who have difficulty reading in educational settings.

When I ask children what they think at the end of a reading catch-up lesson, everyone responds like this.
“I was an illiterate person, but now I can read books on my own.” The illiterate children in our school, while slightly behind the other children, have the ability to soar into the world at their own pace.
This book guides teachers who seek to embrace and nurture the unique world of each child in their classrooms and move forward together, guiding them on the path to truly practicing early literacy education.