Suggests strategies which include risk-taking, monitoring one's own reading, and self-correction for helping beginning readers gain meaning from the printed word. (MKM)

In order to have both fluent reading and good comprehension, the student must be brought beyond accuracy to automaticity in decoding. (JH)

Proposes a Gestalt version of the word family approach to phonics instruction as a way of reducing the number of phonetic units a child must learn to gain total phonetic control of the English language. (TO)

Discusses the use of syllabication in teaching decoding to beginning readers. (RB)

Describes a reading lesson for first graders in which phonics is taught both explicitly and contextually. Discusses three prerequisite understandings about print that make learning to read much easier for children. Advocates a balanced approach toward literacy instruction that helps children integrate what they already know with new strategies,…

Describes a tool for finding texts that match children's decoding skills. Begins with an overview of current thinking and research on the use of decodable text in beginning reading instruction. Presents five steps to show how teachers can locate decodable texts that match and supplement their phonics instruction. (SG)

Explores early stages of reading acquisition, specifically the relation of phoneme blending and letter recoding to individual differences in word decoding. Examines the ability to recode letters, blend phonemes and decode words in Dutch children. Indicates that results are consistent with the self teaching hypothesis and other theories that imply…

Although there is evidence for a close link between the development of oral vocabulary and reading comprehension, less clear is whether oral vocabulary skills relate to the development of word-level reading skills. This study investigated vocabulary and literacy in 81 children aged 8 to 10 years. In regression analyses, vocabulary accounted for…

Teaching beginning reading to children with physical and speech impairments can be especially challenging. One reading strategy, known as the Nonverbal Reading Approach, is specifically designed to promote decoding and word reading for this population of students. The authors present three studies that show the successful use of this approach.

The irregularity of English spelling rules, dialect differences, and an inability to identify sound segments within a single syllable are three important reasons teachers and students have difficulty teaching and learning reading using phonics. Within the same language, phonics rules may need to be adapted to fit the dialect of the student or of…

Surveys how children develop their powers of word identification, and questions common assumptions about the utility of sight words. (TO)

Considers some research evidence, and extracts from it strategies and techniques that could profitably be used in the classroom. (HOD)

Finds in year 1, children showed effects of neighborhood size in high frequency words read in stories and in low frequency words read in lists and stories; in year 2, rimes from large neighborhoods were read more accurately than rimes from other neighborhoods; and by year 3, effects on low-frequency words continued, but not for high-frequency…

Looks closely at students to discover if the conception of reading as decoding is sufficient for beginning readers. Discusses how one student did not seem to know how to enter into the imaginative world of texts or how to listen and respond to literature. Outlines how the notion of culture helps educators enable students to approach texts in…

Gives suggestions for teaching decoding to the beginning reader. It is important to align decoding with the stages of reading development as well as with the structure of the English language. Systematic, explicit instruction ensures the success of most children. Keeping instruction connected to meaning respects the ways that children learn…