Phonological awareness is one of several key precursor skills to conventional literacy that develop during the preschool period. Significant amounts of research support the causal and predictive relation between phonological awareness and children's ease of learning to decode and spell. However, many preschool curricula and early childhood…

In this article, the authors explain how one of them helped a struggling reader develop reading, writing, and self-regulatory strategies. The article is based on two foundations: Marie Clay's, the developer of Reading Recovery, ideas on the self-extending system of reading and Schunk and Zimmerman's four developmental levels of self-regulation…

We examined the benefits of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) as a supplement to a phonics-based reading curriculum for kindergartners in an urban public school system. The CAI program provides systematic exercises in phonological awareness and letter-sound correspondences. Comparisons were made between children in classes receiving a sufficient…

Compares two major methods for teaching phonics. (RB)

Developed to provide supplementary instructional strategies for reading teachers at the kindergarten level, this booklet presents the instructional module for identifying rhyming words, a component of the Comprehensive Reading Program of the Chicago Public Schools. The activities in this booklet are presented in four developmental stages--the…

Contains an interview with R. C. Orem on what Montessori schools think about early reading for children from a disadvantaged background. (RB)

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)

Analyzes the Bullock commission's view on the methodology of beginning reading instruction with special reference to i.t.a. (RB)

Offers Request, the Directed Reading-Thinking Activity, the Expectation Outline, the Prereading Guided Reading Procedure, Word Wonder, and Semantic Webbing as techniques that use many of the basic principles of the directed reading activity while adjusting to the needs of specific materials and students. (FL)

Urges the use of the language experience approach to helping children learn to read and to write. Suggests some activities for starting the school year using this approach. (TJ)

Reviews research findings that suggest the importance of systematic phonics instruction in beginning reading. Cites arguments against phonics teaching and indicates that they appear unsupportable since they are incompatible with research findings and since they make unwarrantedly negative accusations about the kind of teaching that must be used in…

Reviews some basic knowledge of phonics all teachers should know. Provides instructional activities to incorporate phonics within a balanced literacy program. Recognizes different approaches to teaching phonics and the importance of phonics. Discusses the use of consonants, blends and digraphs, short vowels, long vowels, and other strange vowel…

The purpose of this article is to describe how increasingly intensive, multilevel interventions can be used to ensure the increase in number of children who learn to read. We first review the promise and limitations of empirically validated best practices for mainstream classrooms. We then discuss results from a recent multilevel intervention…