Provides an analysis of answers to a questionnaire completed by educators in 14 countries showing that they are responding flexibly to differing needs and new legislation affecting their schools. (FL)

Discusses the language experience approach (LEA) to teaching reading and offers suggestions for six types of LEA stories: student selected, class shared, shape, patterned, written dialogue, and directed language teaching. (FL)

Concludes that first grade boys in a basal reader program supplemented with phonics instruction learned reading skills and read with comprehension as well as those in an intensive phonics program. (FL)

Provides ideas for implementing the language experience approach with first-grade students. (FL)

Reviews recent research and concludes that it supports a continued and pragmatic developmental analysis of the processes involved in beginning reading. Discusses the instructional implications of this research. (FL)

Concludes that when children learned confusable words, their subsequent learning of words was at a faster rate than those children who learned nonconfusable words first, and that high imagery words were learned more quickly than low imagery ones. (FL)

Explains how one kindergarten teacher introduces her students to children's literature. (FL)

Five contributors discuss the following topics: bringing comics to life through readers theatre, peer tutoring to improve word attack and comprehension skills, using storytelling to increase reading comprehension skills on Okinawa, beginning reading in Italy, and using remedial reading students as tutors for younger students. (FL)

Nineteen first grade children were randomly assigned to two experimental reading instruction conditions lasting 12 weeks. Both conditions used the language experience approach to teaching beginning language. In the experimental stage, the language experience approach was augmented by a total of six hours of individualized word-bank activities.…

Compares the stages of print awareness in two children to emphasize the developmental stages of literacy. Emphasizes the importance of parents and teachers responding appropriately as children develop their reading and writing skills. (HTH)

Discusses the need for systematic exploration of claims about the advantages of language experience dictations; recommends that teachers guide the rereading and editing of early dictations to facilitate comprehending behaviors, and that they help children explore writing conventions as their dictations indicate a readiness to learn them. (ET)

Reports on the use of reading schemes in British infant schools, as indicated by survey responses of 631 infant school heads. Notes that most schools adopt a similar policy to beginning reading, using one principal reading scheme that is supplemented by a varying number of other schemes. (GT)

Provides information concerning the value of letter names in the teaching of reading and spelling. Presents specific discussions about the importance of letter names to prereading phonics abilities, the phonemic values in letter names, and the use of letter names in word analysis, semantic word recognition, and semantic spelling. (MKM)

A third-grade teacher's account of her struggle to determine the most appropriate methods for teaching reading skills includes grouping techniques, methods for creating interest in reading among the students, techniques for diagnosing reading levels, and a fifth dimensional approach to teaching beginning reading. (JN)

Describes the construction of a criterion-referenced test designed to test the ability of beginning readers to pronounce CVC letter combinations. (MKM)