Using student dictated stories to create class books is an exciting way to teach young children about books and writing. Children can thus use their own material as they learn to read, the books provide a class library, and writing through dictation allows young children to learn about reading and writing before they can read or write--even with…

This study investigated kindergarten, first, and second grade children's ability to make linguistic judgments about sentneces that were either correct or disrupted along semantic or grammatical lines. Sentences on the judgment task were created according to clearly specified rules utilizing grammatical features that could be transformed into…

In spite of the recognition accorded three-quarters of a century ago to the importance of the advanced study of reading, there still remain far too many individuals and institutions for whom reading, reading acquisition, and reading instruction are not yet established as areas of study worthy of the most serious, scholarly attention. The case for…

A review of the research stresses the importance of language skills to beginning reading. (JH)

Intended for reading teachers and school administrators, this paper proposes a whole language, comprehension based approach to reading instruction that is rooted in the humanistic acceptance of the learner as problem solver and that builds on strengths and minimizes preoccupation with reading deficiency. Following an introduction and rationale for…

Thirty-three first grade classrooms in Georgia were observed to determine the state of language experience instruction and to examine whether such instruction makes a difference in students' awareness of the reading purpose, their knowledge of instructional terminology, their reading attitudes, and their reading achievement. The Allen Level of…

A study investigated the effects of the prompting procedure and the fading procedure upon the acquisition of word recognition skills in beginning readers. The prompting procedure is designed to overdetermine correct reading responses during word acquisition, while the gradual fading of the prompts results in transfer of control from the prompt to…

This report summarizes research related to the use of a conventional basal reading program with students in the Kamehameha Early Education Program (KEEP). Results of instruction were measured by the number of objectives gained each quarter, the total number of objectives gained, the number of lessons taken for each objective, and scores on the…

The present study is a replication of a Lahey and Drabman study (1974) which investigated the effects of contingent versus noncontingent reinforcement on the learning of sight words. The subjects in this study were 14 Kamehameha Early Education Program (KEEP) students who composed the lowest reading group in a combined first-second grade…

Reading research is an important aspect of the Kamehameha Early Education Program. This report describes the overall strategy of the reading research program, which is based on a conceptual framework that divides lines of inquiry into motivation, linguistics, instructional procedures, and correlational analysis. Preliminary results for each of…

Suggesting that the ability to identify words depends as much on contextual information available when one is reading for meaning as on decoding skills, this paper challenges traditional, mechanistic skills approaches to reading instruction. In addition, it contends that comprehending (relating written material to what one already knows) is a…

One approach to preparing kindergarten children for beginning reading combines a meaningful print environment with active student involvement in the learning process. The environment of the classroom from the beginning exposes children to meaningful printed words and symbols. Children use name tags not only for identification but also as a way for…

Results of the examination of teacher's manuals, grades one through four, that accompany a number of basal reading series used in schools in Staten Island, New York, indicated that although teacher's manuals included many phonic rules, none of the examined texts gave any utility or frequency data or cited any research studies to support the…