The question of whether children should be taught to read before first grade has long been discussed, but never settled. As the educational level of the people and the demands of industry increase, the rate of functional illiteracy also rises, provoking criticism of school programs and creating a need to find new ways of dealing with the problems.…

As part of the development of the phonics-based reading component of the SWRL Model 2 Communication Skills Program for kindergarten through third grade, this set of 166 spelling-to-sound correspondence rules for one- and two-syllable words was created. Designed to accompany a lexicon for beginning reading instruction, this booklet includes an…

Extension courses and inservice training for reading teachers can increase their ability to teach reading. For maximum effectiveness extension courses should (1) emphasize the technical rather than the theoretical preparation of reading teachers, (2) combine lecture and discussion with classroom practice activities, (3) provide a variety of…

This manual presents a Spanish phonetic reading program based upon pictures which provide clues to each fundamental speech sound in the language. Pupils are thus able, through auditory and visual discrimination exercises, to match a Spanish speech sound with its proper alphabet symbol. For related documents, see FL 003 749, FL 003 750, and FL 003…

The research paradigm of Farley and Manske on individual differences in the orienting response (OR) defined by heart rate (HR) deceleration was extended to performance in reading readiness tasks. The OR was measured in 114 kindergarteners. Fifteen trials of pure tone stimulation (1000 cps, 61 db) followed by a 16th trial at 2000 cps and a…

A total of 14 four- and five-year-old girls learned to read two blocks of 12 words, each block consisting of (1) four words requested by each child (own words); (2) four words mentioned by Ashton-Warner as "one look" words for individual children (AW words); and (3) four words from the Scott-Foresman basal reader series (BR words). Measures of…

Productive application of linguistics to the field of reading has made necessary the formulation, revision, and expansion of theories and models of reading to incorporate relationships among stimulus characteristics of writing systems and response components of phonological, morphological, syntactical, lexical, and affective systems. These…

This report supplements the first South East Education Development project (SEED) on first grade children. Full and partial records of 624 second grade students and 591 third grade students are the basis of this diagnostic review. The empirical data obtained for the SEED project students included: each student's sex and number of full days in…

A sample of 100 first graders participated in a study of the relationship between three types of spacing used in written sentences for segmenting word boundaries and pupil errors in completing word-boundary tasks. The results indicated that eliminating printer's word boundaries in written sentences had a significant effect on first graders'…

The Junior League/Vancouver School Board tutorial Program began in September 1973. A coordinator was hired to train and supervise community volunteers who would tutor children with reading difficulties using a synthetic phonic program with multisensory reinforcement. Forty children, seventy-seven tutors, and twenty-two schools have participated in…

Studies by the Exemplary Center for Reading Instruction and others reveal that teacher characteristics account for beginning readers' performance more than do program characteristics. To be most successful in acquiring reading skills, pupils need teachers who provide enough time for practice in skills, who can prompt (model, demonstrate) the…

Twelve kindergarten and 12 first-grade children with a high risk of failure in reading were identified using the Jansky-de Hirsch Screening Index; an equal number of potentially average readers were also selected. Strengths and weaknesses in areas related to success in reading were assessed using factor scores from the Jansky Diagnostic Battery.…

Forty-three reading programs identified by Kentucky school districts are briefly described. Program descriptions are organized into four sections: lower elementary, upper elementary, intermediate middle school, and secondary school. Within each section, programs based on a variety of philosophies and approaches are presented. (AA)

This paper advocates the use of "intrinsic" activities, such as the language experience approach and individualized reading, to teach beginning reading. Unlike "extrinsic" approaches, which depend on texts or other external motivators to stimulate learning, intrinsic methods exploit the internal desire of the child to acquire knowledge.…

When a formula for assessing the language stimulation value of pictures was applied to several basal readers, the results indicated that most of the pictures were of low potency or stimulation potential. (MKM)