This paper details the development of two commercial programs for the instruction of language skills. The first, a reading program for the first two months of first grade, is designed to move children from speaking to reading without experiencing failure. In teaching prereading phonics skills (letter recognition, letter writing, awareness of…

In order to understand better the elemental processes involved in beginning reading (specifically, how cognitive skills are acquired and whether a relationship exists among basic skills), Robert Calfee and colleagues conducted a first-grade reading diary study. Forty target children in 1973-1974 and 50 children in 1974-1975 were observed as they…

This study was designed to determine the relationship between sex, race, and the vocabulary development of kindergarten children essential for readiness to read. Fifty-one kindergarten children (twenty-nine males and twenty-two females) from Texas public schools were given the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and the vocabulary subtest of the…

An overview of the language experience approach and suggestions for implementing it at all levels of instruction are presented in this booklet. Based on the assumption that it is impossible to isolate reading instruction from other language functions, a multimethod approach is described which focuses on the linguistic, conceptual, and perceptual…

One of the programs included in "Effective Reading Programs...," this program is based on the principle of early identification of students' strengths and weaknesses and the development of individualized methods to correct the weaknesses and emphasize the strengths. The program, begun in 1972, serves 749 kindergarten and first-grade…

This study was based on the hypothesis that familiarity was an unrecognized factor producing gains scored on previous studies to determine whether a relationship between achievement in beginning reading and cognitive synthesis could be demonstrated. Subjects were 56 randomly selected kindergartners given Farnham-Diggory's synthesis tasks as a…

An effort to lay the foundation for the preparation of reading programs which will match the social and linguistic background of lower-class children, in particular children of the nation's black ghettos, is made in this paper. The paper consists of five sections. The first section discusses the interconnection of social, geographic, and stylistic…

Designed to give teachers, specialists, and students insight into the historical development of trends, theory, research, and current practices in reading instruction, 82 selections written over a period of nearly 150 years have been compiled from books, monographs, pamphlets, yearbooks, conference proceedings, and education periodicals. The…

In the Spring of 1967, two groups of about twenty 4-year-olds from varying socioeconomic backgrounds of a small Midwestern community were subjects in a study to design a preschool curriculum. After an IQ test, individual identification tests (word, letter, and numeral) were administered to determine the children's knowledge. Home interviews and…

Teaching beginning reading using the Initial Teaching Alphabet (i.t.a.) was experimented with in a project which had the dual purpose of (1) providing educators with the opportunity to observe the use of i.t.a., and (2) determining the effectiveness of i.t.a. with Mexican American bilingual children. Twenty i.t.a. demonstration classes…

Having divided those aspects of linguistics which have direct concern with the teaching of reading into two general types--phonology and usage (content and structure)--it was stressed that a teacher can employ both, understanding that initial recognition of sound symbols is necessary and that the point of developing reading skill is to enable…

A task analysis of the conceptual skills prerequisite to learning to read by a phonics-based method is made in an attempt to distinguish these skills from reading's component skills. The model for task analysis presented by Gagne, in which a cumulative learning of prerequisite conceptual skills is assumed, is used. The analysis deals primarily…

The beginning reading problems of the child who speaks nonstandard English are analyzed from the standpoint of the linguistic theory of interference, the name given to the condition in which the person imposes the sound and grammatical system of his own language on the language to be learned. Applications of the Skinnerian theory of stimulus…

The 302 reports of reading research summarized here were published between July 1, 1971, and June 30, 1972. The research has been categorized under six headings. The first category includes other summaries of research, classified as general or under specific titles. The second category consists of research literature related to teacher preparation…

The purpose of this study was to determine if the segregation of first grade children from second and third grade children resulted in improved vocabulary skills and reading comprehension skills for beginning second graders. From two carefully prescribed populations of children--one which had attended Curry School in Tempe, Arizona, from the…