Early childhood educators are concerned with the most effective method of integrating whole language and phonics to maximize emergent literacy skills. In kindergarten, it is especially important to provide the students with a variety of institutional approaches to accommodate different learning styles. A study examined the effectiveness of Super…

The seventh edition of this book, like previous editions, is designed to give busy reading specialists, teachers, and students in reading education specific, concrete methods for locating and correcting reading difficulties. The book stresses the importance of direct instruction, motivational learning activities, and abundant practice in the act…

This report describes a program for improving language and literacy development among young children. The targeted population consisted of public school children, ages three to five, enrolled in an early childhood special education program and an at-risk prekindergarten program. The problems of delayed language and literacy development skills were…

Students entering first grade are not prepared to read. They lack the readiness skills that provide the foundation for success. Learning to read and write is a struggle, particularly for those students who have not had a variety of experience with reading and writing prior to entering school. In an effort to increase the readiness skills of…

This book addresses common questions to enable teachers to make informed decisions about the appropriateness of integrating phonological awareness activities into their language arts programs. The primary purpose is to call attention to recently published (mid to late 1990s) children's literature that can be used to foster children's…

In a third-grade classroom, a 3-week-long study was conducted on the pros, cons, and effects of three particular spelling strategies and activities. By focusing on two specific spelling strategies--phonemic awareness and word identification--the study hoped to indicate that conventional rote learning, drilling, and memorization do not help…

Reading Recovery has proved to be an effective intervention for meeting the needs of at-risk first graders. When Reading Recovery is not fully implemented in a school, the teacher then assumes responsibility for intervention. This project addresses how a regular education, first grade classroom teacher can best meet the needs of first grade…

Within the fundamental context of "how children learn to read," attention is drawn towards an understanding of the "components" that are necessary for the child to move from oral language to early literacy. Looking at this transition requires the educator to consider whether literacy can develop as naturally for the child as speaking, or if not,…

This 15-minute videotape describes the NewPhonics program, a developmentally appropriate program specifically for kindergarten and pre-first grade that fosters the skills necessary for early literacy learning. The video addresses the two necessary skills that children must possess to experience success in the early stages of literacy learning:…

A study examined the effects of commercially produced phonics software upon the phonemic awareness of students studying reading with the Herman Method for teaching reading. Participants were 13 middle school students in a self-contained or comprehensive developmental special education classroom. The control group of six students did not use the…

Discussing how the National Reading Panel is searching to gain valuable perspectives and insights from practitioners and other stakeholders engaged in the teaching and learning of reading, this paper considers insight from practitioners outside of the panel members. It reviews the major concepts discussed at five regional meetings of the National…

The phonics method of teaching decoding skills appeals to adult readers because of its logical application of real and apparent phoneme/symbol correspondences. Instead of memorization, a low level cognitive skill, adults are challenged to use perceptions of the correspondences gained inductively. (Author/CSS)

Examines associations of multiple measures of naming speed, phonological awareness, and verbal intelligence with word reading in poor readers and good readers. Reveals that for poor readers naming speed and phonological awareness were associated with word reading, but not verbal intelligence--for good readers, phonological awareness and verbal…

Compares kindergarten instructional programs of three groups of at-risk children. Partitions groups based on their first-grade reading performance. Finds that children in the most successful reader group came from kindergarten classrooms in which more time was spent in phoneme awareness, spelling, and writing activities, and that the average and…

Reponses of poor, average, and good spellers at different age levels to a phonemic segmentation test containing nondigraph pseudowords and to an experimental spelling test containing exception, ambiguous, regular, and pseudowords suggested that the average and good spellers made fewer and more phonetically accurate errors than the poor spellers.…