Contains contributions from five educators concerning the following topics: (1) the "Super Sounder" system of presenting phonics instruction to beginning readers, (2) teaching vocabulary in a multigrade classroom, (3) language experience and basal readers, (4) pacing as a key to successful drill work, and (5) creative ways to encourage reading.…

Contains contributions from three educators concerning the following: (1) child-made books in beginning reading, (2) ideas for celebrating a "reading week" as part of American Education Week, and (3) using doll families to teach phonics to beginning readers. (FL)

Suggests a variation on the language experience approach designed for groups of nonverbal children. (MKM)

Reports on an investigation of the effects of teaching first grade children two sets of six words by phonics and sight word methods in three instructional conditions with either a selection or production response. (MKM)

A critique of the newly published Sesame Street Library, a set of 15 children's books. Maintains that the content of the books is sexist, racist and complicates rather than simplifies the pedagogical task. A further criticism is that the Library stoops to commercialism in an effort to further sales. (CM)

The article describes a beginning reading program that was planned and implemented by an interdisciplinary team for 14 first-grade language-handicapped children. (DLS)

Results of a study of teacher rankings of reading readiness suggested that teacher rankings are as reliable as reankings using the Metropolitan Readiness Tests; the results did not indicate that teacher expectations of student achievement can be altered. (FL)

Argues that the teaching of initial reading should focus upon the beginning reader rather than on teaching procedures and that factors in the individual child such as motivation, experience, oral language, cognitive development, and pace of learning should be considered. (FL)

A study of 46 first-grade children to determine how basal instructed and language experience instructed children would differ in their use of written language cues revealed no significant differences between the two groups in their use of these cues. (TJ)

A study involving 65 children from 5.6 to 9.5 years of age suggested that the average child's ability to differentiate spoken words from other units of speech improves with age and that significant relationships exist between children's knowledge of spoken words and their reading achievement. (GT)

Examines the following: the history and current status of the assessment of prereading skills or reading readiness in the United States, recent research findings with implications for readiness testing, future directions for prereading measures, and classroom implications of prereading assessment research. (GT)

Significant differences were observed between sentence length used by children in speaking and the length of sentences in primers and first reader textbooks. (JD)

Examines the relationships among accuracy and latency of word recognition and comprehension by nonfluent readers and whether component letter or holistic processing was used in word recognition by these same readers. (HOD)

First graders were taught to read words either in printed sentence contexts or printed singly on flash cards. Post-test scores indicated that context-trained children learned more about the semantic identities of printed words, while flash card-trained children could read the words faster and learned more about orthographic forms. (JMB)

In order to determine at which age children in Montessori Schools show an interest in reading and what types of materials are used to maintain interest, a questionnaire was sent to five schools in Louisville, Kentucky, accredited by the Montessori Society (a sample questionnaire is included). (MM)