In fall of 2019, the EdWeek Research Center set out to gain a clearer sense of nationwide teacher and teacher education perceptions and practices by sending out two surveys about topics related to early reading instruction, especially as it related to phonics. One survey was taken by 674 K-2 and elementary special education teachers who indicated…

This paper will explain what a reading teacher learned from working with a group of first-grade struggling readers in a series of shared-book experience classes. The shared-book experience approach used a variety of science-themed books that were aligned with the first-grade curriculum and appropriate for beginning readers. Considering the…

Creating research-based expectations and education strategies for all teachers to implement consistently are the beginning steps in giving all students access to standards-based curriculum and in creating readers, writers, and content learners. Reading aloud is one research-based practice that enhances achievement for all students, whether they…

The effectiveness of a reading intervention using the whole-word multimedia software "Oxford Reading Tree (ORT) for Clicker" was compared to a reading intervention using traditional ORT Big Books. Developing literacy skills and attitudes towards learning to read were assessed in a group of 17 struggling beginner readers aged 5-6 years. Each child…

The more than one hundred approaches to initial reading instruction can be grouped under ten headings: basal reader, phonemics, phonemic reading, "linguistics," total language arts, language-experience, one-to-one sound symbol, individualized reading, early reading, and perceptual discrimination. Although the basal reader approach is used in more…

Discusses the characteristics of predictable books and ways to use them with first grade students. Offers a bibliography of such books. (FL)

The teaching and self-study materials of the Phonological Transcription Accompanied Text (PTAT) method takes into account both sides of the debate over reading instruction in which the skills-emphasis partisans and the meaning-emphasis partisans are engaged. PTAT materials attempt to make the best use of children's oral language and rich…

Suggests the extent and manner in which the word characteristics of materials may be separated from and contribute to the strategies children develop for word identification. (RB)

Outlines a technqiue for using books with predictable content with young children and lists several such books. (FL)

Answers questions from two teachers who are apprehensive about practices concerning basal reading instruction which they are asked to implement in their schools. (MG)

Assuming that although the pre-operational child generates syntactic utterances, it cannot be inferred that he can comprehend the process of analyzing or synthesizing words or utterances as specimens, it would follow that trying to teach pre-operational children to read by decomposing words or sentences, on the assumption that words and the…

A word attack program that begins with phonics and incorporates various aspects of a linguistics approach is described in this paper. Regardless of the material that is used, there are 13 consonant sounds which are easier to learn than others: b, d, j, f, k, p, t, l, m, n, r, v, and z. W and h would be introduced next because in isolation they…