The goal of the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Practice Guide, "Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten through 3rd Grade," is to offer educators specific, evidence-based recommendations for teaching foundational reading skills to students in kindergarten through 3rd grade. The guide suggests…

This accessible teacher resource and course text shows how to incorporate strategy instruction into the K-8 classroom every day. Cutting-edge theory and research are integrated with practical guidance and reflections from experienced teachers of novice and struggling readers. The book describes the nuts and bolts of creating classroom contexts…

Sparked by the Common Core State Standards, teachers and literacy experts are arguing about the role of a time-honored pillar of English/language arts instruction: classroom activities designed to help students understand what they are about to read. The attacks on--and defenses of--"prereading" are unfolding largely in cyberspace, through online…

Learning the alphabet is essential to learning how to read. This study focuses on teaching Kindergarten students the alphabet using multiple means of representation. The 24 Kindergarten students in this study have been exposed to activities that reflect their learning styles, interaction among various group settings, and they have been allowed to…

PictoPal is the name of a technology-supported intervention designed to foster the development of emergent reading and writing skills in four and five year old children. Following the theoretical underpinnings and a brief description of PictoPal, this article describes how children worked with the technology; how the intervention elicited their…

A teacher-parent recounts how she used labels on grocery items and other advertising formats to help her preschooler gain confidence in beginning reading. (JMB)

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

Describes an instructional technique for expanding children's vocabulary that embodies the principle that learning involves relating new experiences to what is already known. (FL)

Examples of comprehension activities are presented in the areas of: context clues, literal comprehension, recall of details, main ideas, maps and charts, interpretive comprehension, sequence, and evaluative comprehension. This article is one of four in this issue comprising the Teacher's Reading Seminar 1979. (SJL)

The 48 phonemic awareness activities in this book can be used to supplement and enhance any reading program. Most of the activities in the book can be used for instructional purposes; however, the games and activity pages are intended for practice and review, not for the initial introduction or instruction of skills. After a discussion of what…

Provides a number of suggestions for teaching children often confused words. (FL)

This article offers both a rationale and method for the implementation of a natural literacy program for preschool children with language disabilities. It reviews research on development of fundamental literacy skills and briefly describes extant approaches to facilitating literacy skills. Tenets of the natural literacy perspective are explained…

Teaching suggestions and game ideas are presented for teaching basic and more advanced decoding in the primary and intermediate grades. This article is one of four in this issue that comprise the Teacher's Reading Seminar 1979. (SJL)