Twenty-four matched pairs of culturally deprived first grade children were divided into an experimental and control group to investigate the effect of special reading instruction on the reading ability of these children. The teacher who administered this special instruction was considered very competent, and the instructional content, although not new, was well organized. The experimental group received the additional instruction three times a week for 40-minute periods from October 1964 to June 1965. Posttests indicated no existence of significant differences in reading ability between the two groups. It was concluded that the failure of this intervention program might be due to the inadequacy of using additional conventional reading readiness instruction instead of introducing instructional innovations. The five areas stressed by the intervention program were (1) visual discrimination, (2) auditory discrimination, (3) language development, (4) cognitive learnings, and (5) developing body image sense. Perhaps the elaboration of these curriculum-content areas herein will suggest possible fresh approaches to teaching reading readiness to the educationally disadvantaged. (WD)