Reviews research offering the teacher a different perspective from which to view beginning reading and provides a strong justification for activities normally thought to be less than academic. (Author/MP)

Establishes a developmental perspective for using caption books (picture books with short language captions closely related to simple pictures), then details how the books can be used in the classroom. (FL)

Describes the three methods of teaching reading commonly used in Italy: the natural method, the phonic syllabic method, and the global method. (FL)

Presents results of a research project concerning beginning reading instruction in 16 countries that use an alphabetic language system. (FL)

Describes an instructional technique for expanding children's vocabulary that embodies the principle that learning involves relating new experiences to what is already known. (FL)

Examines the development of knowledge of orthographic structure among beginning readers by testing their ability to discern which word in a pair looked most like a word. (HOD)

Presents a seven-step technique for teaching primary school students to recognize function words. Describes a method for eliciting parent help in the task and offers suggestions for review and follow-up activities. (FL)

Provides an alternative explanation of the divergent findings appearing in the literature on conceptual tempo and reading acquisition. (HOD)

Examples of comprehension activities are presented in the areas of: context clues, literal comprehension, recall of details, main ideas, maps and charts, interpretive comprehension, sequence, and evaluative comprehension. This article is one of four in this issue comprising the Teacher's Reading Seminar 1979. (SJL)

In these three experiments with kindergartners, comparisons were made on subjects' acquisition of nouns under three conditions: no picture; picture related to word; and unrelated picture. It was concluded that pictures could be used with advantage, if the child was aware of the relationship between word and picture. (Author/SJL)

Argues that there is a developmental relationship between children's performances in reading and writing tasks and describes two diagnostic tasks that teachers can use to assess young children's developing concepts of words in reading and in writing, without interfering with the natural processes of learning to read and write. (HTH)

Reviews the research on the initial teaching alphabet (i/t/a), the sources of conflict and misunderstanding involving its use, and its future in reading instruction. (FL)

Indicates that a relatively small percentage of the gifted preschool population actually starts to read before starting kindergarten. (Author)

Reviews research discussing early writing and invented spellings of young children as indicators of their readiness to learn to read and write. (MKM)

Presents a step-by-step method for teaching difficult function words to slower readers. (FL)