Examines the role of early reading instruction on the nonword reading strategies employed by beginning readers. Describes how three groups of children were following either: the Early Reading Research project; the National Literacy Project; or usual classroom practice. Suggest that early reading instruction does have a significant impact on early…

Explores the effectiveness of "word boxes" phonics instruction on beginning first-grade children's word identification and spelling performance. Finds that children in the word boxes condition significantly outperformed children in a more traditional phonics condition. Indicates that word boxes lessons can be a viable phonics approach to…

Discusses a primary classroom in which the teacher uses miscue analysis, print awareness tasks, and book handling analysis to get to know her kids as readers and to build her instructional program. Describes using reading strategy groups made by grouping together students with similar strengths. Appends a description of how to administer the Book…

Discusses how miscue analysis informs two teachers' daily interactions with middle-grade students: how their teaching is transformed, how the structure of the day is changed, how they use reading conferences, and lessons from children. Appends a reading interview form, a record sheet for audio tapes, and a description of a strategy lesson on…

Reflects on how miscue analysis empowers teachers and empowers students. Discusses how it changes teachers' understanding of readers who are experiencing difficulty. Discusses Retrospective Miscue Analysis, which involves students in analyzing their own miscues. Offers teachers advice for getting started in miscue analysis, and appends a 38-item…

Relates the story of a kindergartner's first experiences with literacy in the school context to demonstrate the importance of constructivism in educators' thoughts about teaching and learning literature. Discusses the reasons why a kindergarten boy suddenly began writing and illustrating "books" about war even though he showed no interest in…

Principles of establishing priorities are applied to the selection and scheduling of instructional priorities for beginning reading instruction, with emphasis on teaching phonological awareness and letter-sound knowledge through more efficient use of instructional time; teaching less, more thoroughly; and providing oppportunities for oral…

This response to Torgesen et al. (EC 608 625) considers educational implications of their longitudinal study on phonological processing and beginning reading. It addresses the stability of phonological processing abilities, training in phoneme awareness, and variables that influence training effectiveness. (DB)

Discusses materials that help primary-grade students develop a richer supply of words: books, audiotapes, and magnetic poetry kits for teachers and/or for students. (SR)

Presents five articles discussing aspects of literacy promotion in the day care center setting: "Promoting Language, Literacy, and a Love of Learning Makes a Difference (Joan Lombardi); "Creating Readers" (Leah Curry-Rood); "Family Literacy" (Jean Berry Racin); "Setting the Stage for Literacy Events in the Classroom" (Judith A. Schickedanz); and…

Considers if Hispanic and non-Hispanic second graders acquire knowledge of structural features of words in the same order and at the same rate. Reveals that both groups appear to be acquiring knowledge of the structural features of words at different rates, but in a roughly similar order with Hispanic learners lagging behind the non-Hispanic…

Suggests that pairing emergent readers of approximately equal expertise provides opportunities for collaborative relationships where young readers pool expertise in jointly constructing text. Notes that children's language use contributed to their shared motivation and, by extension, helped to create and support the "shared situations"…

Comparison of basic reading instruction by either computer assisted instruction or traditional book methods with eight children (ages 3-5) with autism found all children spent more time on task in the computer condition and that five of the eight children could reliably identify at least three words after the computer assisted learning. (Contains…

Reading Recovery is an early intervention program that aims to drastically reduce the number of children who need remedial help in reading and writing in their later school years. Developed in New Zealand in 1984, the 12-15-week program is now being used across Canada. (Author/SV)

Investigates the use of orthographic analogies in 6-year-olds. Notes that neither rime nor phoneme awareness measures were correlated with rime inference uses and that vowel, but not rime inference, was correlated with scaffolding errors. Finds that rime detection was the strongest predictor of reading ability, whereas phoneme segmentation was the…