Controversy exists as to the specific approach to use in teaching language arts skills to culturally and linguistically different children who speak non-standard English. Three primary approaches involve eradicating, maintaining, or expanding the home language systems of such children. In the expansion approach, children are taught to use standard…

Research indicates that reading and writing should be learned together since both are language processes, and that children should be shown how the skills they have acquired during learning to read apply to learning to write. A language experience approach is useful for accomplishing this. Many aspects of writing point out the integrative…

A study was conducted to determine the feasibility of using oral story making experiences to improve the oral language proficiencies and "sense of story" of fourth grade remedial reading students through select literary experiences. These experiences included exposing the students to literature in read-aloud exercises, and using wordless…

New approaches to teaching writing and language development may be the answer to the anomie that is behind so many school problems. For example, the uses of language that are necessary for academic success are also those that help individuals deal with the environment and relate to it. Therefore, the personal use of language is critical for all…

A method is described for teaching writing to students for whom English is nearly a "first" language by virtue of the nature and circumstances of their use of it. The basic tenet of the approach is that the student can only learn to write well if he has a belief in himself and in the value of his own responses. To write well, the student must…

Although this syllabus is one result of an eight-week program designed to train Indian aides for work on reservations, it is also written to be used by all persons who will serve as educational aides or sub-professionals. Materials are presented to provide the aide with an understanding of child development, all facets of the curriculum, Indian…

Selected recent research studies are reviewed under the following headings: (1) perception pretraining for reading, (2) hierarchical arrangement of reading skills, (3) comparisons of suggested sequences of different basal series, (4) code versus meaning emphasis in beginning reading, and (5) the relative effectiveness of methods involving…

The Reading Miscue Inventory (RMI) is a diagnostic instrument based on the assumption that reading is not letter or word decoding, but rather a process of predicting, selecting, and sampling of cues that are subsequently tested by syntactic and semantic information within both the reader and the text. In a case study of three remedial readers…

Documented and detailed accounts of productive thinking and concept attainment provide the essence of this textbook intended for use by graduate students who are interested in the teaching of reading as a cognitive process. The first part of the book explains how the foundations of reading instruction are based on thinking. The second and third…

The reading progress of disadvantaged urban Negro children was investigated over a 3-year period in the Comparing Approaches in First-Grade Teaching with Disadvantaged Children (CRAFT) Project in New York City. Reading was taught by two basic approaches, skills centered and language experience. The former included a basal reader method and a…

This test is intended for use with a two-volume, 32-lesson set of materials for rural disadvantaged kindergarten children. The lessons are designed to help alleviate language deficiencies of the children by providing them with school-related activities, communication and cultural experiences, and other readiness instruction through language…

This paper describes a program that systematically increases the composition productivity of disabled students who are inexperienced writers. Program features include building discourse units, using student-generated language, and incorporating self-evaluation. Procedures for small group instruction focus on constructing and testing clauses,…

This book aims to help teachers who are committed to whole language principles explain the philosophy to their students' parents. It addresses the concerns of parents who most likely grew up in a traditional, teacher-centered educational system, and who therefore might be unfamiliar with a whole language approach to language arts. Drawing on work…

Reading aloud to children is the most important step towards making a child a reader. It exposes them to print and excites their curiosity through intriguing story lines. Parents play an enormous role in this aspect of reading development, because it begins long before a child is in school. In the beginning of school, teachers spend time assessing…

Utilizes M. A. K. Halliday's theories concerning the social and cultural functions of language to construct a series of social studies/language arts integrated learning activities. First graders wrote letters to an imaginary mouse in their desks and third graders answered the letters. Analyzes this activity and includes an annotated bibliography.…