This book is designed to give parents and teachers of children with Down syndrome and other developmental delays an alternative reading program. The program is based on a functional, language-experience approach which attempts to compensate for common deficits in auditory memory and verbal skills. The seven chapters of Part 1 describe how children…

This study sought to determine how retained first grade students function in a whole language classroom after meeting with failure in a traditional first grade setting. Data collection for the five retained students, plus six "at-risk" students, involved naturalistic observation. Reading began from language experience stories that the students…

As part of the special education curriculum developed by the Puerto Rico Department of Public Instruction, this teacher's guide (in Spanish) presents a basic curriculum for reading skills. The curriculum is designed so that the defined skills will meet the needs of children with disabilities. The form in which teachers and other professionals will…

This pack provides material for new tutors who are beginning to be involved in literacy work with adults. The activities can be used in one-to-one or small group situations and include a range of suggestions for beginning learners and those needing to brush up on their skills. This pack contains nine sections. Section 1 provides ideas for helping…

This set of instructional materials consists of a 12-page leader's guide and 75 activity sheets to be used in adult literacy programs by parents who want to help their children learn. The leader's guide explains the purpose of the materials and offers suggestions for use of the materials one on one, in a class group, and outside the class or…

This practicum was designed to allow first graders the opportunity to read and write in a more natural and authentic manner than that permitted by using the basal reading series as the basis for reading instruction. The first grade reading program was transformed from a basal-oriented approach to a whole language approach. Through the use of…

Project SOLID START is an integrated reading program involving regular classroom, special education, and reading teachers, and parent volunteers in the Melrose, Massachusetts public schools. SOLID START supports beginning literacy in a developmental, rather than a remedial, mode. The project tests the hypothesis that a carefully structured,…

This digest links the development of listening comprehension to the emerging reading comprehension of young American Indian students, and suggests ways that teachers can use locally produced materials to enhance young students' emergent literacy. Reading comprehension is the key to literacy, and prior knowledge supports listening and reading…

This paper presents arguments in favor of adding reading achievement at age seven to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Progress in reading is developmental. At age seven, most children are in the midst of the crucial stage of beginning reading; by age nine, those making normal progress have moved beyond this stage. Much of…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 27 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the effect of the single-parent family on reading comprehension and attitude toward reading; (2) the relationship between first grade children's reading…

Intended for parents and based on the premise that parents are their children's first and most important teachers, this booklet is a distillation of findings from the 1984 report of the Commission on Reading, "Becoming a Nation of Readers." The introduction reiterates the commission's conclusions (1) that a parent is a child's first…

The first volume of this final report of a large study that detailed the day-to-day workings of, and student response to, two philosophically different approaches to reading readiness as they were used in six Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) kindergartens reports on the literate environment approach. The background section explains that this approach…

A study investigated whether syntactic differences between oral and written discourse interfere with the comprehension of beginning readers. Subjects were 28 second grade and 28 fifth grade students who read, orally, versions of stories identical in nature except for the structure of their syntactic patterns. One version contained structures more…

Students Asking Questions (SAQ) has proved to be a simple, effective method for teaching urban third grade students to generate literal, inferential, and critical questions from their readings of instructional materials. Teachers using the SAQ method prepare students for reading a selection from a basal reader by offering one literal, one…

In view of the inadequate beginning reading achievement of many minority students, specific pedagogical factors that may enhance the classroom teacher's ability to help such children learn to read have been identified. Educational research suggests that the teacher is a major variable in the degree of success of the reading program. Teacher…