Many individuals who work with young children between birth and age 8 assume that literacy activities must be planned and executed as elaborate, formal lessons. The increasing pressure seeping through national accountability measures and the renewed focus on early literacy is trickling down to this age group. The Division for Early Childhood of…

Early literacy development is the gateway to reading and future academic success. Learning about sound-letter correspondence and basic decoding strategies are but two fundamental skills that have been found to support this later success. In addition, an emphasis on environmental print (e.g., McDonald's, Wal-Mart, Shell) and functional print (e.g.,…

This article focuses on a concept that has rarely been studied in beginning reading research--a child's concept of word in text. Recent examinations of this phenomenon suggest that a child's ability to match spoken words to written words while reading--a concept of word in text--plays a pivotal role in early reading development. In this article,…

Information processing theory suggests that sublexical fluency skills are important to word reading development, but there are few supportive data. This study investigated if sublexical fluency (letter name fluency, letter sound fluency, and phoneme segmentation fluency) contributed to the development of word reading and spelling in 92…

A total of 292 Chinese children in the first, third, or fifth grade in Beijing, China, participated in one of two experiments investigating radical awareness; that is, the knowledge that a component of most Chinese characters, called the radical, usually provides information about a character's meaning. The technique was to present two-character…

In attempts to understand the process of literacy acquisition, many researchers have devised models of reading. The basic elements of most reading acquisition models include word, or print knowledge and comprehension. The inadequacy and global nature of the conversational model of language proficiency provide impetus for C.E. Snow's development of…

This digest discusses the concept of "phonemic/phonological awareness"--the awareness that spoken language is made up of discrete sounds. The digest also discusses why this concept is so important to early childhood educators, its relation to the debate on the best type of reading instruction, and teaching methods that may help children…

Designed for the grades K-2 literature-based classroom, this reading assessment kit includes 6 books which represent the stages most developing readers pass through as they move from being emergent to fluent readers. The kit also contains reading ladder assessment tools and reproducible charts and checklists. The literature selections in the kit…

A study investigated the diversity in listener responses to student behaviors during oral reading. Participants were four beginning readers in grades one through three. The adult listeners included the child's classroom teacher, a listener from the home, and a reading teacher and/or one or more reading tutors. The children were videotaped reading…

A two-part study evaluated the effectiveness of Longfellow School's primary-grade whole-language literacy project. Part 1 of the study began in the academic year 1984-85 with children in standard English and bilingual classes in grade K-3. Over a 5-year period, a total of 1,021 individual assessments were carried out on 336 students. Data…

A study determined the interrelationships among children's storybook reading behavior and knowledge of print concepts in kindergarten and their reading ability at the end of first grade. A sample of 21 subjects, ranging in age from 5 years 10 months to 6 years 8 months, was randomly selected from the morning and afternoon kindergarten sessions at…

Picture books enable children to experience "reading" from a very early stage in their lives. Although readers in the early part of this century were trained to read heavy books full of fine print, nowadays readers are being trained to read using intellectually and emotionally challenging picture books. Such books (particularly those by…

A practicum report addressed the problem of lack of interest in the literacy of young readers and the need to motivate them to want to read. A cross-age peer-tutoring program was established where primary students were paired with upper intermediate grade students who displayed positive reading attitudes and habits. The tutoring pair worked…

In an updated edition, this book is intended to provide a solid, but accessible, introduction to what is known about the psychology of reading. The book is not aimed at cognitive psychologists, but at those who have had an academic background equivalent to the introductory course in psychology. The guiding purpose of the book is to address what…

As part of a study that sought ways to improve the language arts educational experience for Grenadian children, an anthropologist investigated how Carriacou Creole English (CCE) reading materials could be provided and how these children would react to them. CCE is the native language of the inhabitants of Carriacou, a sister island of Grenada. The…