To adult readers directional movement seems natural, because adults have mastered this aspect of the reading process, and it is quite automatic. For some children, directional behavior can be very complex. Such was the case for one bright little boy ("Chance") the author/educator served in Reading Recovery. This article tells the story…

This article discusses issues in the assessment of individuals who show difficulty in learning to read and write in different languages. A review of reading studies in several language contexts leads to a proposed framework for assessment procedures. Case studies from interventions in three language contexts (Sylheti/English, Herero/English,…

Analyzes two case studies of children who seem to have learned to read before enrolling in school. Examines common factors in their home environments, and suggests it is important for teachers to take into account the reading experience each child brings to school. (RS)

A first-grade teacher used comic books as read-alouds during her implementation of a reading/writing workshop. The students, primarily English-language learners, were able to make use of this medium in order to learn new reading practices. The teacher used the comics to teach multiple aspects of various reading processes such as reading with an…

Six children from one first-grade classroom were videotaped 18 times over a seven-month period, while reading aloud complete stories. Analysis of the first 50 miscues and the last 50 miscues in both new and familiar materials read by the children yielded profiles of each child's oral reading strategies. The major findings indicated that these six…

THE EXTENSION OF THE CONCEPT OF READINESS INTO EDUCATION EARLIER IN THIS CENTURY RESULTED IN STUDIES WHICH CONCLUDED THAT CHILDREN ARE NOT READY TO READ UNTIL A MENTAL AGE OF 6.5. BUT ACTUAL RESEARCH ON PRESCHOOL READING WAS, AS OF 1957, EXTREMELY LIMITED. TWO LONGITUDINAL STUDIES WERE UNDERTAKEN TO REMEDY THIS LACK. BOTH STUDIES SOUGHT TO…

Noting that children's perceptions of literacy and of themselves as learners differ from those of adults, this book documents how Sarah, from the ages of 2 to 5 years, understood literacy and invented reading and writing for herself. Numerous reading and writing samples in the book, organized around broad research questions, present Sarah as an…

Research suggests that reading is a written language process that is learned naturally in much the same way as oral language. To test this hypothesis, a descriptive, longitudinal study was conducted of the reading development of eight kindergarten and first grade students who showed environmental print awareness but were not considered readers.…

The details of a 6-year investigation entitled the Education Testing Service (ETS) Collaborative Research Project on Reading, which brought researchers and educators together in classroom studies of young children learning to read, are presented in this book. The first four chapters of the book describe the theoretical rationale, design, and…

A study investigated how second-grade learners, identified as less proficient, continued their literacy learning in a whole language classroom. Subjects, six second-grade Chapter 1 students, were observed during independent reading time twice per week over a period of 8 months. Additional data collection procedures included participant…

This paper argues that literature-centered reading programs, based on the perspective that reading is the process of bringing meaning to print, are in the best interest of the language minority students in the nation's elementary schools. After a review of basal reading systems and language-centered reading programs, the paper describes the…