Contends that the "basics" in reading are not skills but concepts the learner must acquire, and that the learner's role is central to this teaching philosophy. (FL)

Suggests three procedures for assessing children's concepts of reading and their understanding of the special language that teachers use during reading instruction: shared book experience, checking the conceptual outcomes of shared book experience, and using a story chart and cloze procedure to extend the conceptual framework of reading language.…

Discusses the characteristics of predictable books and ways to use them with first grade students. Offers a bibliography of such books. (FL)

Argues that Piagetian theory does not support the use of a code-breaking approach to teaching children to read prior to the advent of concrete operations. Suggests that primary instructional emphasis with these children should be placed upon the meaning-getting aspects of reading. (FL)

Analyzes some problems that can make beginning basal stories difficult for young readers to understand and offers suggestions for ways teachers can help alleviate the problems. (FL)

The dimensions that interact during reading acquisition include properties of texts, the acquisition of reading skills and strategies, the development of cognitive and language skills, the influence of instruction, and the effects of motivational, cultural, and language variables. Discusses how these interactions may occur and describes three…

Describes an experiment designed to determine whether beginning readers read with fewer oral reading errors if the reading materials have content directly related to the reader's existing cognitive structure. (HOD)

Short, sight-word vocabulary lists derived from the spontaneous speech of four different groups of children are compared with the vocabulary in six beginning reading series. Very high levels of agreement were found for function, but not for content, words. (JMF)

Reviews literature that describes the success of Japanese children in learning to read Japanese; concludes that Japanese children learn their phonemic Kana script very quickly, possibly because they work with the syllable as a unit, but that the Kanji (Chinese characters) in the Japanese text present difficulties for learners. (GT)

Describes recommended procedures for assessing reading readiness and the teaching of beginning reading for three- and four-year-old children. (Author/MP)

Indicates some of the strengths and weaknesses of the cloze procedure as a way to help children learn to read, to determine comprehension, and to gain additional insights into how readers process language as they read. Suggests that the beginning reader is poorly judged by use of cloze. (TJ)

Presents results of two experiments which measured difficulty of learning vowel and consonant sounds and revealed significantly more correct responses for consonant sounds than for vowel sounds. (JM)

Shows two major handicaps in the anti-phonics movement which suggest that the future of the movement is doubtful: (1) the demonstrable weakness in both the theory and method of anti-phonics; (2) the increasing confidence that publishes and editors of widely used basal readers are placing in phonics. (BF/JH)

Illustrates a strategic-process perspective toward reading skill development, discusses cognitive research related to early reading processes, and relates the perspective to a variety of research on the early reading period (grades one to six). (JM)

Traces the history of reading instruction in the United States, discussing books about teaching reading which exerted great influence in their respective eras. Discusses the "First-Grade Studies" (begun in 1964), a cooperative effort to analyze study results on teaching reading. (PA)