What do Slinky toys, sign language, clipboards, golf pencils, and a house icon have in common? They all are a part of the author's writing and reading program, which teaches children how to write, and then read what they have written. This book includes: effective strategies that address multiple learning styles; a ready-to-use form for ongoing…

Because students too often leave the public school system with weak or non-existent reading skills, the subject of how to teach reading is debated. Most children bring a considerable level of oral language ability to their first day of school. Development of spoken language skills seems to come without conscious, formal effort for most children.…

Describes two models of childrens' literacy acquisition developed by research psychologists. Argues that these models make practical sense by embodying within them the notion that children use a combination of top-down and bottom-up processes to solve the problems of how to read. (RS)

Studied emergent literacy in Hebrew by analyzing nursery and kindergarten children's attempts to write and read pairs of nouns. Found that, with age, children's sensitivity to phonology increased and sensitivity to semantics decreased and that these sensitivities played a greater role in literacy acquisition than did sensitivity to morphology. (MM)

Assesses speed, accuracy, and types of errors in decoding lists of words and pseudo words and performance in two phonemic awareness tasks for first- and second-grade German and American children. Suggests that successful reading in English depends upon more complex grapheme to phoneme correspondence rules than does reading in German. (SC)

This article reviews research on effective classroom reading instruction that finds dramatic reduction in reading failure occurs when explicit instruction is provided in phonemic awareness and decoding skills, word recognition and text processing, construction of meaning, vocabulary, spelling, and writing. The need for small-group instruction for…

A study examined th phonics instruction that five basal reader series provide from kindergarten through grade six. The five basal programs (designated as Series A through E) that were examined are both similar and dissimilar in the recommendations they make for phonics. One series covers as many as 129 letter-sound correspondences; another covers…

A study examined the importance of two phonological encoding procedures (addressed phonology and assembled phonology) in children who are learning to read and how the relative importance of these two procedures might change over the age range from six to eight. Subjects, 72 fifth, fourth, and third grade students from two inner London (England)…

A study examined whether illustrations that must be attended to in order to make sense of a text hinder decoding by encouraging dependence on such illustrations for interpretation of text, both for decoding and for answering questions. Subjects--167 first graders--were asked to read four stories, two of which were taken from basal readers and two…

The reading research and relevant literature examined in this paper focus on the role that "orthographic regularity" plays in word recognition. Orthographic regularities are those features of printed English words that reduce the uncertainty of what letters might be present. The paper considers three theses: rapid word recognition, which…

The evidence presented in this paper suggests that deficits in selective skills are primary factors in learning disabilities, and that aptitude/treatment interaction models may be useful in devising teaching methods for the reading instruction of learning disabled children. After reviewing various approaches to teaching reading to learning…

The development of children's metalinguistic understanding of the basic unit of reading--the word--was examined. Subjects were 45 children from preschool, kindergarten, and first grade who were reclassified according to reading ability (nonreadiness, readiness, reader). The children's understanding of the word as a linguistic segment was measured…

The purposes of this study were to determine the effects of Minicourse 18 on the development of 27 specific teacher behaviors related to teaching reading decoding skills by a group of inservice and preservice teachers of primary grade children, and to determine the effects of the teacher training upon pupil performance in reading. Minicourse 18…

This volume is an organized collection of papers which were presented at the International Reading Association convention at Atlantic City. The authors are scholars concerned with early childhood education. They explore topics that range from conclusions drawn from research on implicit speech to the advisability of teaching reading to…

The speed and accuracy of skilled and less skilled first-grade readers were assessed in the fall and spring. Children read random lists of words and coherent paragraphs. Poor decoding skills, rather than an inability to use content to facilitate word recognition, caused the poor performance of less skilled readers. (Author/BS)