Offers guidelines for helping children produce their own alphabet books. (FL)

Describes the rationale for The Informal Reading-Language Test, then presents the test. (FL)

Argues that there is a developmental relationship between children's performances in reading and writing tasks and describes two diagnostic tasks that teachers can use to assess young children's developing concepts of words in reading and in writing, without interfering with the natural processes of learning to read and write. (HTH)

This article reviews the literature on the importance of phonological awareness within the context of language/literacy learning and discusses the developmental continuum of phoneme awareness skills. Specific techniques are suggested to guide the speech-language pathologist in the assessment of phonological awareness skills. (Author/DB)

Describes various games which provide drill for beginning readers. (RB)

Argues that songs, by their very nature, appeal to children and that the use of picture books with song lyrics can play a special role in reading instruction for all types of learners. (FL)

Argues that the language experience approach to the teaching of beginning reading not only makes use of the valuable resource of children's speaking, but also cultivates their metalinguistic ability and eases their transition between two very different forms of language. (FL)

Suggests a variation on the language experience approach designed for groups of nonverbal children. (MKM)

This position paper was written to assist teachers and administrators in Oregon in preparing curriculum and setting priorities for kindergarten programs. It begins by asserting that the focus of kindergarten instruction should be on the total development of the child: socioemotional, physical, and intellectual. The need for concrete learning…

Discusses the language experience approach (LEA) to teaching reading and offers suggestions for six types of LEA stories: student selected, class shared, shape, patterned, written dialogue, and directed language teaching. (FL)

Discusses the need for systematic exploration of claims about the advantages of language experience dictations; recommends that teachers guide the rereading and editing of early dictations to facilitate comprehending behaviors, and that they help children explore writing conventions as their dictations indicate a readiness to learn them. (ET)

Describes language experience activities which tie concepts, vocabulary, sentence structure, and beginning reading skills together and which are appropriate for the bilingual child. (MKM)

This article presents a five-step sequence for teaching children with disabilities to read pictures. Steps are sequenced for content and complexity of picture, student response requirement, and language demands. They include: (1) identify person, (2) identify object, (3) identify person and object, (4) identify action, and (5) identify sequence.…

The language experience approach is a reading methodoloy that is highly organized, highly structured, and very systematic, but that allows teachers to teach without texts. It is a multiple, variegated set of activities designed to serve one purpose, namely, the instructional use of pupil's own language. As such, there are five interrelated aspects…

This book discusses research on learning to talk, read, and write and explores activities to support the development of these crucial competencies. The book's discussion of research is divided into two chapters: "Supporting Early Literacy: The Preschool Years" and "Supporting Early Literacy: The Primary Years." Following the two chapters on…