The author favorably reviews the "SUCCESS in Beginning Reading and Writing Program" developed by Dr. Anne Adams of Duke University. The two-hour instructional program is divided into four modules: phonics/spelling; content reading; writing language experience stories; and recreational reading. Program costs and ease of use are noted.…

Discusses experiments that provide information about the reading processes involved in mapping phonemes onto alphabetic symbols; suggests several techniques for helping children both to differentiate among the short vowel sounds and to associate sound and symbol. Focuses on the needs of beginning readers who are experiencing reading difficulties.…

Discusses four linguistic patterns of oral literature that are of special interest to reading teachers, suggests ways that oral literature can be used for skill instruction in beginning and remedial reading, and shows how oral literature can stimulate creativity. (ET)

Describes a bilingual open classroom program for kindergarten children in which the classroom environment is rich with printed language and children are introduced to reading by an individualized system they both enjoy and profit from. Tells how children "write" books, how phonics is introduced, and how reading is incorporated in a variety of…

Describes ERIC documents pertaining to the role of parents in preparing their children to read and the ways in which they can help shape and strengthen a school's reading program. (FL)

Findings from this study suggest that by the end of the first grade, children taught using "meaning emphasis" curricula shift towards increased use of graphic information when confronted with reading material in which words are harder to identify. (HOD)

Critiques an experiment by M. Arlin, M. Scott, and J. Webster (see EJ 206 153) in which their pictures as an aid to learning hypothesis contrasts with the focal attention hypothesis supported by research by H. Singer, S. J. Samuels, and J. Spiroff (see EJ 105 648). (MKM)

The experiment studied the differential effectiveness of two methods of blending instruction on the ability of prereaders to decode synthetic words. Findings indicated the superiority of auditory-visual training over auditory, with both methods significantly superior to practice on sound-letter association (the control group task). (RC)

Reviews the literature to address questions that school psychologists and teachers have regarding emergent literacy in kindergarten. Defines emergent literacy; examines the importance of reading to children; and discusses print awareness/concepts of print, knowledge of letter names, phonemic awareness, formal reading instruction, early readers,…

This is the first article in a three-part series on the use of CD-ROM storybooks, poetry collections, and writing programs to motivate beginning readers. This initial article discusses the usefulness of CD-ROMs for teaching young students in the emergent literacy stage. A sidebar explains how multimedia stimulates learners. (Author/LRW)

This article offers both a rationale and method for the implementation of a natural literacy program for preschool children with language disabilities. It reviews research on development of fundamental literacy skills and briefly describes extant approaches to facilitating literacy skills. Tenets of the natural literacy perspective are explained…

Discusses aspects of phonological processing and linguistic awareness that may set the stage for initial reading development. Hypothesizes about the distinctness of phonological representations. Distinguishes phonological representations of high distinctness from other representations by many features. Compares the distinctness hypothesis to the…

Offers ideas for teaching young readers to appreciate books. Suggests creating activities, such as reading contests, book theater, book reviews with a twist, character essays, and game shows. Intended as a starting point to help inspire Catholic educators to come up with more ideas of their own. (NB)

Ascertains whether there were any significant differences in the early reading ability of kindergarten children who received direct instruction with environmental print, those who received indirect instruction, and those who received no instruction. Uses analysis of covariance to ascertain differences. Reveals that the control group and the…

Reviews the reading process in Arabic as a function of vowels and sentence context. Reviews reading accuracy and reading comprehension results in light of cross-cultural reading to develop a more comprehensive reading theory. Presents the phonology, morphology and sentence context of Arabic in two suggested reading models for poor/beginner Arabic…