Noting that the questions of when and how to teach beginning reading are among the most controversial in early childhood education, this chapter examines how young children develop as readers. The chapter begins with a focus on the emergent literacy perspective for the insights it provides into young children's reading and writing development. The…

This report describes the early reading program in Emerald Elementary School, located in a Midwest urban fringe district. From 1996 through 1998, Emerald's students performed well above the district average or near the state average on reading achievement. During this period, the school had at least half of its students eligible for free or…

Describes a project in which student teachers at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington are being prepared to teach beginning reading using the language-experience approach. (CS)

Describes and partially evaluates the Scott, Foresman Reading System, a new set of materials for primary reading instruction. (VJ)

Cites articles and research suggesting that the ability to learn to read is inherent within any normal child and recommends that teachers use strategies and materials relevant to the child rather than a prestructured reading program. (MM)

Concludes that a grapho-syntactic organization that divided sentences into meaningful units and random units was comprehended significantly better by both good and poor comprehenders than was the regular paragraph format found in basal readers. (FL)

This paper analyzes: (1) the task of learning to read, in the context of cognitive and linguistic tools a child has at his/her disposal; (2) how these tools change with further development and experience; and (3) how teachers can foster this development and growth. Eight research-based recommendations for classroom teaching are given. (PP)

Constance McCullogh, a former president of the International Reading Association who was rendered illiterate by a brain hemorrhage, describes difficulties she faced in learning to read again, and compares her problems to those faced by beginning readers. Advice to reading teachers is included. (PP)

A comparison of the self-selected reading words of a group of preschool children to the words in the first reading books of four widely used basal reading series reveals that the children's self-selected words are more imagery-loaded than the words in the readers. (FL)

Reading is a transactional interplay between the reader and the text. Reading for cognitive understanding and for aesthetic enjoyment are very different processes. Schools tend to emphasize the first and neglect the second, although children first experience language in an aesthetic way. Reading instruction should emphasize both types of reading.…

Reports results of measuring children's comprehension of basal reader stories that had been revised based on notions of the role of prior knowledge in comprehension and the establishment of key story content. (AEA)