Kindergarten teachers face a problem when choosing effective reading strategies from the research on teaching 5-year-olds how to read. The purpose of this quantitative exploratory study, with a pretest-posttest and comparison design, was to explore the success of a specific combination of reading strategies in order to improve early literacy. The participants included 32 students enrolled in 2 kindergarten classes (treatment group) and 16 students enrolled in the comparison group in South Carolina. The Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) was used as a pretest and posttest to measure the participating students' reading level. Thirty-two students received instruction utilizing a combination of 9 reading strategies determined to be effective by the National Reading Panel and Sousa. The 9 strategies included: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, drill and practice, high expectations for learning with applications from brain research, activating the student's prior knowledge, and utilizing parental support by keeping communication open through newsletters, meetings, and conferences. The comparison group received instruction utilizing phonics and phonemic awareness. Analyses were performed using an independent sample t-test using gain scores for the two research groups. Results indicated that the treatment group (M = 1.91) had a significantly ( t = 2.32, df = 46, p < .03) larger increase in performance compared to the comparison group ( M =1.19). The DRA scores from the treatment group showed a 53.1% gain in 3 months as compared a gain of 3.75% of the comparison group in 9 months. This study has the potential for social change by contributing to the body of knowledge needed to address the escalating problem of illiteracy rates in 5-year-olds.