THE NAMES OF CLOTHES ARE INTRODUCED - DRESS, SHIRT, TIE, AND HAT - BY LINKING VISUAL AND ORAL CUES TO THE WORDS. FROM A REVIEW OF THE SECOND LESSON, THE PHRASE "THE BIG DAY" IS INTRODUCED (ARTICLE, ADJECTIVE, NOUN). TO THIS PHRASE "IS" IS ADDED. THE STUDENT MUST RECOGNIZE "IS" AS A NEW WORD AND MUST UNDERLINE IT IN…

PICTURES OF FOUR NOUNS ARE INTRODUCED--MAN, WOMAN, CAT, AND DOG. THE NEXT SEQUENCE OF PAGES TEACHES WORD RECOGNITION THROUGH CONFIGURATION. A GEOMETRIC FORM IN THE SHAPE OF THE WORD IS LINKED WITH THE WORD ITSELF, FOLLOWED BY A PICTURE-WORD DISCRIMINATION FOR EACH OF THE FOUR NOUNS. THE WORD IS COMPARED AND CONTRASTED TO PICTURES. THE SERIES THEN…

A LONGITUDINAL STUDY WAS PERFORMED WHICH FOLLOWED THREE GROUPS OF CHILDREN (CULTURALLY DISADVANTAGED, AVERAGE, AND CULTURALLY ADVANTAGED) THROUGH GRADE THREE IN AN ATTEMPT TO DETERMINE THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF CERTAIN PERCEPTUAL FACTORS ON SUCCESS OR FAILURE IN BEGINNING READING. INSTRUMENTS USED WERE SELECTED TO IDENTIFY…

Although a recent study shows that school children in Denmark are acquiring initial reading proficiencies at a slower pace than in previous years, that there were more very good readers and more very poor readers in 1972-73 than in 1966, that the average reading performance was lower in 1972-73 than in 1966, and that children in 1972-73 read more…

A study was conducted to determine which of three major cue systems (linguistic, cognitive, or extralinguistic) 146 subjects at the kindergarten, first grade and second grade levels used to reconstruct meaning when confronted with a reading task. Cue system utilization was related to four factors: modality (listening versus reading), reading…

To determine the degree of emphasis on phonics instruction necessary for beginning readers, a study was conducted involving five pairs of four-year-old monozygotic twins. Randomly selected twins from each pair were exposed to two different levels of phonics instruction. In one group, the reduced treatment group, only one sound equivalent per…

The effectiveness of the Three Owls Reading Method was tested, using 53 children from a Head Start program. The Three Owls system combines sight, phonic, and linguistic reading methods with movement and touch modes of instruction. After a pretest for phonic letter recognition, the students were matched and assigned to one of two classes in a…

This paper examines the relationship between beginning reading and cognitive development and reviews some of the research conducted so far. It is noted that children learning to read may be in various stages of cognitive development, some at a preoperation stage, some at a concrete operation stage, and some at a transition stage. Instructional…

This research was done to determine whether formal kindergarten training in alphabet and number names would result in a higher reading level for children at the end of grade 1. As part of an earlier research project, two classes of primarily middle-class kindergarten children received 8 weeks of training in alphabet and number names. Two control…

A reading program developed to teach the minimum set of skills which enable children to recognize words as rapidly as possible through direct instruction in left-to-right orientation, blending, rhyming, and sounds is described. The materials for the program consist of teacher presentation notebooks used by the teachers in working with small groups…

Eight approaches to the teaching of elementary reading are described briefly. The Executive Committee of the Department of Elementary-Kindergarten-Nursery Education of the National Education Association selected the approaches to be discussed. They include (1) Language Experience Approach by R. V. Allen, (2) Phonic Approach by Charles E. Wingo,…

A questionnaire was administered to 50 first-grade teachers who reported strategies used in teaching reading to 1,145 Mexican-American, Black, and Anglo children in three school districts in Texas. Seven null hypotheses were tested. It was concluded that (1) reading instruction is delayed with Mexican-American children; (2) on the average, 68% of…

A functional prediction scheme was sought for use in kindergarten which would have good predictive power for future reading achievement and be easy and quick to administer and score, inexpensive, and conducive to classroom use. A group of 21 kindergarten children was tested for reading readiness, intelligence, and psycholinguistic ability. Their…

Dialects have features of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation that distinguish them from other varieties of a language; they exist in all languages and occur when members of one group communicate more among themselves than they do with speakers of another group. Black English vernacular (BEV) is a fully formed linguistic system with its own…

The purpose of this paper was to test the hypothesis set forth by Farnham-Diggory (1967) and Denner (1970) that problem readers lack representational and syntactic competence. A random sample of 72 first graders, stratified by sex and social class, was given the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test and the Farnham-Diggory tasks. An analysis of variance…