Reading instruction based on the acquisition of basic skills has produced a basic level of literacy in children, but such minimal levels of literacy are no longer sufficient for students required to deal effectively with complicated literary and informational material encountered in upper elementary, middle, and high school texts. Research in the…

An experiment was developed under the assumption that learning about word families could help ease the introduction of short vowels to first grade students. The hypothesis was that teaching the word families would increase students' reading vocabulary, in contrast to the learning acquired by students taught only phonetic analysis. The control…

Because reading is first and foremost a language comprehension process focusing on the visual form of spoken language, such teaching strategies as language experience and assisted reading have much to offer beginning readers. These techniques have been slow to become accepted by many adult literacy instructors; however, the two strategies,…

Young learners need a quality program for developing reading skills which is both sequential and holistic--sequential because there is an appropriate order to some skills, holistic because skills need to be incorporated in context. Word recognition techniques are thus integrated with ideas gleaned from reading. The learner should use acquired…

Designed as thematic units around Wright Company Big Books, the lessons in this guide demonstrate ways that Big Books can be used in a whole language first grade program. Each lesson indicates skill focus, needed materials, procedures, and additional thoughts or suggestions about the lesson. Units consist of: "Bedtime" (five lessons);…

This guide to selected juvenile fiction lists books available on disc, on cassette, or in braille in network library collections provided by the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped of the Library of Congress. The books were selected for readers from preschool to second grade, and fall into the following categories:…

This case study examines the process of learning to read and write in a first-grade boy for whom difficulties in literacy acquisition were predicted from a battery of tests commonly used to identify learning disabilities (LD). Data included: (1) test scores from the school psychologist, speech therapist, audiologist, and from standardized school…

Until recently, kindergartens were designed to foster a positive attitude toward school and provide a well-rounded development through the use of suitable play, art, and social activities. Unfortunately, many kindergarten programs have begun to rely on inappropriate materials and techniques taken from formal first-grade programs. Such programs…

Designed for use as supplemental reading, this book provides high interest reading material for beginning adult readers in rural areas of Tennessee. The book is printed in large type for readers with vision problems. Where appropriate, stories are written in a modified vernacular form. The book may be made more pertinent to geographic areas other…

Intended to help educators explain an instructional program to parents, this document presents and discusses the following ten statements reflecting traditional views about teaching reading: (1) Reading is a simple, passive mental process. (2) An efficient reader pronounces every word in the passage. (3) When children come to an unfamiliar word,…

The rich oral language experiences given children in Russian preschools and primary schools accounts for their subsequent success in reading. (JH)

The complete texts of 250 trade books for children in the primary grades were analyzed by computer in order to identify recurring two- and three-word strings. Of the 202,763-word sample that resulted, 89 two-word strings occurred 100 times or more, and only two three-word strings occurred more than 100 times. These frequencies represent,…

Children are ready to write before they are ready to read; thus reading instruction should be an outgrowth of abilities children develop through inventing their own words. This gives children practice with the more concrete activities of word composition before they undertake the relatively abstract task of reading. Writing exercises may be given…

Two beginning reading curricula that use computer assisted instruction were developed during 12 years of work at Stanford University. This paper describes those curricula and the motivations, assumptions, procedures, and problems that were involved in their construction. Twelve observations about curricular design and development are summarized to…

Traditionally, reading instruction has emphasized the visual-sound correspondences in language. The illusion that words can be "sounded-out" letter by letter and word by word to produce meaning needs to be re-evaluated according to the psycholinguistic nature of the reading process. Some nonvisual aspects of reading which are…