Decoding Skills
TeachingDecoding by Dr. Louisa Moats is a must-read summary of what we know about teaching decoding skills. The article is from a seminal issue of American Educator, The Unique Power of Reading & How to Unleash It, and remains one of the essential touchstones for teaching early literacy skills.

Soundabet
developed by kindergarten teacher Dan Gurney, is a literacy support system that makes learning the code (44 sounds and 26 letters) easy and fun for K-1 students. It can be used as a supplement to Open Court, Houghton Mifflin, or any other solid core language arts program. Request Soundabet materials via email to dangurney@yahoo.com.

CIERA, The Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement
has many useful resources, downloadables, presentations, research papers, etc. with a particular focus on K-3 reading issues. One example of the work you can find at the CIERA website is Learning to Read Words: Linguistic Units and Strategies, a paper by Dr. Connie Juel of Harvard University.

It has been thought that teaching using explicit instruction is most beneficial for low performing students and students in special education.  However, the results from extensive research repeatedly indicate that all students benefit from well-designed and explicitly taught skills.  The National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum describes the principles of Explicit Instruction in an Effective Classroom Practices Report.

Starfall
opened in September of 2002 as a free public service to teach children to read with phonics. The site’s systematic phonics approach, in conjunction with phonemic awareness practice, is perfect for preschool, kindergarten, first grade, second grade, special education, homeschool, and English language development (ELD, ELL, ESL). Starfall is an educational alternative to other entertainment choices for children.