The child approaching reading for the first time comes well-equipped with developmental tools to lighten the task. Linguistically speaking, in addition to some decoding skills, the child has a full-blown syntactic system consisting of the basic syntactic forms, though some of the more intricate forms will not be mastered until much later.…

Sixty-six children from average and low-ability reading groups in grades one through five participated in a study of the effects of vocabulary instruction on reading comprehension. The children were pretested for their ability to identify words and to supply meanings for the new vocabulary words in the next basal reader story they encountered. The…

Information is given in this booklet on how to implement a language experience approach to reading readiness instruction in the kindergarten based on the experiences of teachers in the Burrillville Reading Observes Necessary Communication Objectives and Skills (BRONCOS) project, a Right to Read program in Burrillville, Rhode Island. An…

Reporting on the construction and validation of instruments for the evaluation of students in the first stages of reading and spelling instruction, this paper first discusses how teachers themselves can determine a student's learning progress with the help of evaluation instruments. Distinguishing between formative evaluation and diagnostic…

Noting that viewing reading as a communicative act can heighten educators' awareness of the ways in which one story can be embedded within another, this report presents and discusses several examples of stories within stories. The report discusses the various participants communicating in a story within a story--the real and implied authors and…

Introducing Preschool Children to Reading through Parent Involvement is a project funded by a New York State Education Department mini-grant. The major activity of the project is to inform parents of preschool children of the research findings and theories concerning reading to young children. Three newsletters are mailed each year to families…

The relationship between speech and print is essentially asymmetrical and changes as the reading ability of the child improves. For the child who has succeeded at decoding, the asymmetry implies that commonalities between speech and print are more important than their differences. Three hypothetical observation points illustrate the similarity…

A total of 107 Arkansas kindergarten teachers responded to a questionnaire designed to identify their attitudes and practices. The questionnaire elicited information concerning the teachers' experiential background, the methods and materials they used to teach reading skills, the prereading and reading skills taught, and their opinions about…

Jean Piaget's theory seems to lend support to reading specialists who believe that concrete operational thought constitutes a necessary and sufficient condition for learning to read. Preoperational children cannot deal with the complex relationships inherent in reading because they are tied perceptually to the immediate situation or…

Selections from the last three basal reading series produced by the Houghton Mifflin Company were examined to determine what improvements were made. One of the fundamental changes occurring in the 1971 revision ("Readers") was the replacement of grade designations with numerical levels that provided a better match between student and…

Data are presented on the use of the Monterey Reading program, a multilevel individualized approach to teaching basic reading skills and improving decoding skills, with 21 hearing impaired students in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg (NC) school system. The Monterey program is further explained to provide built in reinforcement, measurable feedback for…

This paper proposes a Piagetian model for an early childhood science education program which provides opportunities for children to learn logical thinking and to prepare them for reading and writing. Discussed are suggestions for science areas of concentration, abilities to consider, substructure levels, cognitive thinking skills, and schemes. A…

A study was undertaken to create and validate a diagnostic, task-based Informal Reading Readiness Inventory (IRRI). IRRI subtests were created to reflect four areas found to be important in reading readiness: awareness of self and media, language experience, reasoning, and phonics. Prereading curriculum components formed the basis for test item…

Directed to parents of preschool children, this booklet suggests that well-prepared children seldom fail to learn to read and recommends that parents prepare their children for reading by providing one-to-one learning situations. The book is divided into sections that describe learning experiences at home when parents read themselves and offer…