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…

Background: This study is conducted in Singapore, where learning to read in English is regarded as essential because it is offered as a First Language (L1) subject in the curriculum and is stipulated as the medium of instruction in the education system, and the mother tongues are offered as Second Language (L2) subjects, although the majority…

Project Early Kindergarten-Early Reading First (PEK-ERF) is a partnership between Saint Paul Public Schools, Wilder Child Development Center, and Bethel University King Family Foundation Child Development Center. The program provides pre-kindergarten education to 3- and 4-year-olds in Saint Paul, and targets those who are low-income, English…

Although there is evidence for a close link between the development of oral vocabulary and reading comprehension, less clear is whether oral vocabulary skills relate to the development of word-level reading skills. This study investigated vocabulary and literacy in 81 children aged 8 to 10 years. In regression analyses, vocabulary accounted for…

Teaching beginning reading to children with physical and speech impairments can be especially challenging. One reading strategy, known as the Nonverbal Reading Approach, is specifically designed to promote decoding and word reading for this population of students. The authors present three studies that show the successful use of this approach.

Based on the idea that word identification is a group of strategies that children develop as they learn to read, not a single letter-sound by letter-sound pathway to pronunciation, this book invites teachers to support readers as they develop and use many different world identification strategies. Chapters in the book are: (1) Using the Alphabetic…

Compares two major methods for teaching phonics. (RB)

A follow-up study examined the long-term effects associated with receiving formal reading instruction in kindergarten. Subjects, 3,959 high school seniors from 24 school districts in 10 states, were part of the Beginning Reading Program (BRP) during the 1973-74 school year. The BRP originally included over 200 elementary schools and over 5,000…

William S. Gray, first president of the International Reading Association, is the focus of this booklet. Sections are devoted to "The Person," which includes Gray's family background, early schooling and teaching jobs, and his further education at Illinois State University, the University of Chicago, and Teachers College (Columbia…

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…

The paper describes the enactive method, an alternative approach to introducing and teaching reading to young hearing impaired children. The method actively involves the child as a processor of the material rather than as a passive consumer. The approach is established for a short period of time each day until the student outgrows its original…

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

Concludes that monosyllabic words are easier for beginning readers to read than are polysyllabic words and that children just learning to read should be taught phonics skills with monosyllabic words. (RB)