Intended for parents and teachers, this guide provides all the information needed to lead a first-grade child through 30 lessons or 30 weeks of learning for a beginning speller. The guide helps the child to learn to identify common, logical spelling patterns; leads the child quickly to more complex words; and aids him or her in becoming a…

Considering how literature for children provides more than just word recognition skills and thinking skills, this paper discusses several reasons why there should be a good children's literature curriculum in the school setting. It points out how children can experience life vicariously through good literature; how good literature can aid a child…

Examines children's acquisition of language meaning through their use of homophony, riddles, and other word play. Discusses ways to encourage the study of meaning, using classroom techniques such as finding metaphorical relations among words and phrases, learning word origins, or studying naming strategies of other cultures. (HTH)

The article lists 50 English/Spanish cognate words (related by descent from the same ancestral language) and provides three strategies for using the words instructionally with Mexican American children. (PHR)

Practical suggestions from teachers include activities for defining new English words, using free association and writing, stocking the sustained silent reading library, and using the compare/contrast strategy for word recognition. (MKM)

Notes that teaching techniques used to "build" vocabulary are not based on the ways most people acquire vocabulary. Discusses the problems and possibilities of expanding students' language usage. (RL)

Explains six tasks which require comprehension of words and which can be used to teach beginning readers. (MKM)

This review of research on reading instruction uses an interactive model to identify learner characteristics, learning conditions, and language processes that are best treated through a meaning-oriented or a code-emphasis instructional program. Resulting instructional guidelines are offered. (Author/DB)

This study compared the effectiveness of reading instruction at the onset-rime level, phoneme level, and whole word level with 48 first graders. Both phoneme and onset-rime groups were significantly more accurate than whole word groups, and there was a tendency for the onset-rime group to outperform all other groups. (Author/DB)

Schema Theory, the use of the learner's background knowledge for the building of new knowledge, is applied to improving reading comprehension skills and teaching vocabulary words and concepts to learning disabled students. Semantic mapping is a vocbulary strategy which produces the interaction between prior knowledge in a graphic form. For…

Intended for reading teachers, this book is concerned with the process of reading, with the perceptual and language skills involved in reading, and with the nature of the task confronting children learning to read. It shows that it is only through reading that children learn to read, and that a teacher's role must therefore be to make reading easy…

Recommends teaching both mental imagery (an unobtrusive, natural text processing strategy) and summarizing (an efficient text reorganization strategy) to students who do not spontaneously use them. (NKA)

Introduces the range of computer software currently available to aid in developing children's basic skills in reading, including programs for reading readiness, word recognition, vocabulary development, reading comprehension, and learning motivation. Additional information on software and computer use is provided in sidebars by Gwen Solomon and…

Offers a set of lesson plans that use simple semantic word maps to help students improve their vocabulary knowledge and comprehension in all subject areas. (FL)

Describes a short exercise used in the English as a second language classroom which provides variety and/or a change of pace. Four-line rhyming poems with accompanying illustrations can be incorporated into activities which help students expand their vocabulary, learn new language functions and structures, and acquire intonation and stress…