Teacher self-reports of the frequency of currently advocated early literacy practices in Grades 1 through 3 were entered into regression models in an effort to predict 3rd-grade outcomes. Explicit skill instruction was a significant predictor of higher passing rates on a state examination and lower rates of special education referral but was also…

Examines the nature of the relationship between phonemic awareness and reading and spelling development. Focuses particularly on the development of early self-directed writing. Investigates the connection between level of invented spelling used in the self-directed writing and later reading and spelling achievement in grades 1 and 2. (SG)

This study investigated the potential benefits of offering childcare providers professional development to promote preliteracy skills in young children. It was hypothesized that direct instruction to providers, through rigorous training and mentorship, would increase children's opportunities for reading success and thus, enhance their preliteracy…

Early childhood is a time of discovery when learning occurs at every turn. The task that early childhood teachers face is how to teach a class full of students who fall at each end of the learning spectrum (and every place in between). This article describes an easy and effective way to address widely diverse needs among young learners--to empower…

This study investigated the prospective relationships between reading performance and reading habits among Finnish children during the first and second grades of primary school. One hundred and ninety-five children were examined twice during their first primary school year and once during the spring term of Grade 2. The results showed, first, that…

Examines teaching rime analogy or letter recoding reading strategies to prereaders. Results reveal that experience with rime analogy increased letter recoding ability, but teaching in letter recoding did not enhance rime analogy. Children learned to read with a rime analogy or letter recoding reading strategy, and many developed new reading…

Addressing beginning reading instruction in urban schools, this article proposes that a curriculum gap exists in many K-3 classrooms that operate under the guidelines of the No Child Left Behind Act and Reading First. The authors make a case for the inclusion of systematic and sustained instruction in comprehension, content knowledge, and writing…

Reading was, is, and always must come first in the early school years. Without a firm basis in reading, children are going to have a tough time in school and, later, in the world beyond the elementary school doors. Children need math and all the other wonderful things they are exposed to in school, but without some degree of success in reading,…

This article compares the development of print and braille reading in children who are blind and sighted in relation to Chall's stage model of reading development. Chall's model includes a prereading period, in which concepts are developed; middle stages, in which skills that are necessary for decoding text are developed; and later stages, which…

This study examined how school-aged children process different grammatical categories. Event-related brain potentials elicited by words in visually presented sentences were analyzed according to seven grammatical categories with naturally varying characteristics of linguistic functions, semantic features, and quantitative attributes of length and…

Phonological awareness, an understanding that spoken language is comprised of individual sounds, is an important construct that has implications for educational assessment and intervention. Unfortunately, the relationship between phonological awareness and its many operationalizations is ambiguous, resulting in both theoretical and practical…

Going beyond the available research on children's spelling development and written text (reading), this year-long longitudinal study examined the relationship between spelling and reading in order to determine whether kindergarten children's ideas about spelling develop simultaneously with reading or whether one precedes the other. Monthly, for 8…

Interweaving sociological/interpretive and cognitive/linguistic perspectives, this book explores the ways in which children first encounter the written word in formal schooling. The book examines the "culture" of literacy as it is introduced and practiced in a corpus of 163 basal and supplementary readers used in a representative…

This set of 70 cards accompanied by instructions on using the cards) can be used by any teacher, tutor, parent, aide, or literacy volunteer, individually or in classes and small groups, to teach the spelling, writing, and reading of nearly all English words to virtually any child (age 5 and up) or adult. The cards can be used for initial or…

Many Canadians are concerned about the quality of reading instruction in Canadian schools. Recent newspaper articles, research reviews, and newsletter articles reflect the nature of these concerns. The official instructional policy in a number of provinces as well as in a number of local school districts is based on a whole-language philosophy.…