Jean Stockard's (2011) article in the "Journal of Research in Rural Education," "Increasing Reading Skills in Rural Areas: An Analysis of Three School Districts," offers a productive opportunity to discuss the standardization of language and literacy teaching and learning in rural schools. The purpose of this response is to…

Outlines recent and past debates on literacy pedagogy. Contends that more students are more highly literate today than ever before. Describes the following literacy pedagogy "ages": the age of reading as decoding; the age of reading as meaning making; the age of reading-writing connections; and the age of reading for social purpose.…

Notes the problems young readers often have in decoding words of three syllables or more that appear in their textbooks and offers three solutions to the problem. (JC)

Reexamines two current, popularly held views about reading: the relative importance of word perception versus the reader's attention to the larger syntactic and semantic redundancies of the text. Some recent findings suggest the seriousness of the difficulty for those who cannot read high-frequency simple words. (Author/DB)

This article proposes that meaning and form (the sound-letter correspondences) are both important in beginning reading, but that initially they should be taught separately. Support for this position is provided, and a two-stage model of preliteracy development is offered, with the first stage emphasizing meaning and the second stage emphasizing…

This paper discusses five language roots of reading: phonology, syntax, semantics, short-term and long-term memory, and auditory segmenting. Teachers are urged to focus early school experiences toward development of these five skills to reduce the incidence of reading difficulties. Specific teaching suggestions are offered. (Author/DB)