Examines beginning readers' reported word identification strategies for identifying unfamiliar words in text in relation to reading achievement, reading-related skills, and academic self-perceptions. Indicates that children who reported using word-based strategies showed superior reading and reading-related performance, and reported more positive…

Investigates first graders' use of analogy in word decoding. Finds students read more words correctly after exposure to analogous clue words, and a dictation task accounted for large proportion of variance on decoding of analogous words. Suggests results clarify previous research, specifically, the helpfulness of clue words in decoding by analogy…

Examines beginning readers' performances with great scrutiny to look at both the quantity and quality of words skipped during reading. Finds that students' performances substantiated Paulson's findings that readers did not fixate on every word. Leads to some additional insights concerning readers' eye movements and the implications for reading…

Examines factors accounting for early reading performance in Finnish, a transparent orthography with a clear mapping of phonemes onto graphemes. Notes that measures for grades one and four included reading comprehension, phoneme awareness, and object- and digit naming. Suggests a larger role for phoneme awareness for children learning a…

Describes one teacher's unhappiness with the teaching situation because of the school district's recent adoption of a systematic intense phonics instruction program that every K-3 teacher is required to use with every child via whole group instruction. Argues for the importance of whole language instruction. (SG)

Discusses the label of "whole language teacher" and expresses that the author's concern about being named one is based on his sense that names matter; he worries about who is doing the naming and for what purpose. Concludes that whole language is needed as a way of creating community to support all those language teachers who "teach against the…

Large numbers of students are not benefiting from current reading curricula and practices. However, despite the presence of a scientifically validated basis for teaching reading, the nuances of exactly how to translate beginning reading research into day-to-day classroom practice remain to be validated. In this article, beginning literacy outcomes…

This study investigated the knowledge and strategies that nonliterate adults use to identify print. Participants were 20 low-socioeconomic status Brazilian adults ranging in age from 20 to 74 years. Participants' ability to identify common environmental signs displaying varying degrees of contextual information was investigated along with their…

Reconstructing historical reading practices is always problematic and even more so when we are talking about children, a group of readers whose voices have only recently been considered important enough to take into account in understanding the act of reading. As literary historians, we must recognize that we read texts meant for children from…

California and Texas mandate 75% to 80% decodable texts for first-grade reading programs, yet these percentages have no empirical base. This study examines the text selections in 6 first-grade programs from the perspective of lexical, semantic, and syntactic features. The composition of text differed across the 6 programs with respect to length,…

Reading words may take several forms. Readers may utilize decoding, analogizing, or predicting to read unfamiliar words. Readers read familiar words by accessing them in memory, called sight word reading. With practice, all words come to be read automatically by sight, which is the most efficient, unobtrusive way to read words in text. The process…

Thomson was the first of very few researchers to have studied oral reading errors as a means of addressing the question: Are dyslexic readers different to other readers? Using the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability and Goodman's taxonomy of oral reading errors, Thomson concluded that dyslexic readers are different, but he found that they do not…

The aim of this article is to illustrate how the teaching of thinking can be incorporated into regular teaching, using the teaching of reading as an example. It provides a brief overview of current understandings of the processes of learning to read and learning to think and then considers how noticing, naming, comparing, categorizing, connecting,…

This study examined the extent to which mora deletion (phonological analysis), nonword repetition (phonological memory), rapid automatized naming (RAN), and visual search abilities predict reading in Japanese kindergartners and first graders. Analogous abilities have been identified as important predictors of reading skills in alphabetic languages…

All teachers recognize the importance of matching literacy instruction to the ability level and needs of each child--but how can this crucial goal actually be accomplished? This indispensable book provides a research-based framework and flexible, highly practical strategies for making differentiated instruction work. Written by leading experts,…