Four studies used the theoretically based understanding of comprehension developed by W. Kintsch and T. A. van Dijk to look for processes that might undergo development as a child becomes more practiced and skilled in reading so that an understanding of these processes might become the basis for reading remediation programs. The first three…

Presented is an annotated bibliography that is helpful to teachers and administrators who are attempting to involve parents in the reading instruction of their school-aged children. Sources cited refer primarily to the involvement of parents from a middle socioeconomic level. Items in the first part of the bibliography deal with research…

Designed to help teachers provide high-interest independent work for their first grade students, this manual contains plans to increase students' reading, spelling, and speaking vocabularies by using original poetry. After a short introduction, the first section describes bulletin board plans that can be adapted for use throughout the year and…

Since the time of E. B. Huey (1908), there have been clear indicators that oral language as a reflection of a child's linguistic ability has been clearly related to his or her reading achievement or comprehension. P. McKee (1937) and W. S. Gray (1937) both speculated that reading difficulties might parallel language deficiencies. G. Hildreth…

It is common in teacher education programs to require a course in reading or language arts methods, at least for students preparing to be elementary teachers. The question for teachers of methods courses is how they can best prepare students to be teachers of reading. A common approach to teaching a reading methods class is to provide information,…

There are two disconcerting aspects of the research studies selected and discussed in the publication "Becoming a Nation of Readers: The Report of the Commission on Reading" (1985). One is the kinds of reading materials that were designated as sources for meeting the various functions of reading; the other is the omission of the role of…

This report, the summary of a series of conferences on reading research, identifies two main theories about the nature of reading: (1) reading as translation, wherein printed symbols are translated into an approximation of oral language, so that the capabilities for understanding speech can be applied to written language, and (2) reading as an…

The use of the behavioral science principle of contingency in several approaches to teaching beginning reading is discussed in this paper. The failure to provide a contingent relationship between the given reading skill and student success in demonstrating the skill can lead to repeated apparent successes without the student actually manifesting…

Two conflicting hypotheses exist regarding how oral reading behavior patterns follow from encounter with the text. One hypothesis views them as following decoding (decoding hypothesis), and the other sees them as occurring after comprehension processes have constructed a semantic representation of the message. These hypotheses are further…

Evaluative comments from one participant in the June 1976 Pittsburgh conference on the theory and practice of beginning reading are presented in this paper. Discussion centers on curriculum analyses, testing practices, teaching practices, units of analysis that are required for reading research, learning characteristics, stages of reading…

A study was undertaken to develop an evaluation procedure that could be used to analyze the cognitive requirements of instructional materials used to teach beginning reading. The study involved four phases. The first phase, an examination of the literature in order to create a basis for the development of assessment procedures, included an…

A model of reading development was tested by examining preschool children's knowledge of print, their interactions with a teacher, and their parents' perceptions of children's attitudes toward printed materials. The central tenet of the tested model was its hierarchical notion of children's progress in learning to read, leading to the assumption…

In a study that investigated differences in the processing styles of beginning readers, a Pictograph Sentence Memory Test (PSMT) was administered to first and second grade students to determine their processing style as well as to assess instructional effects. Based on their responses to the PSMT, the children were classified as either visual or…

A study was conducted to determine if verbs were learned as easily as other words by primary school children. One hundred eight kindergarten children were divided into high, medium, and low I.Q. ranges and each range group was further divided--one group for each of three testing methods at each intelligence level. A list of words including 25…

Sixty-six children in three classrooms were tested at the end of their kindergarten year and again at the beginning of their first grade year to determine the effects of summer vacations on the gain or loss of beginning reading skills. The Letter and Word Reading Test, which was based on a developmental model of prereading and beginning reading,…