Current research increasingly highlights the role of early literacy in young children's development--and informs practices and policies that promote success among diverse learners. This handbook presents cutting-edge knowledge on all aspects of literacy learning in the early years. Volume 2 provides additional perspectives on important topics…

The three articles in this publication discuss the following topics: (1) a psycholinguistic perspective on beginning reading that focuses on the child's linguistic system, rather than on the information processing strategies he or she learns to use in reading, and identifies word recognition as the major hurdle faced by the beginner; (2) the issue…

Use storybook reading to build the early literacy competencies that preschool, kindergarten, and first-grade students need to become successful readers and learners. This essential research-based guide provides strategies and sample interactions that will help teachers to strengthen children's knowledge of written language, vocabulary, phonology,…

In this study, two hypotheses are examined: (1) There is a positive correlation between the incidence of dialect speech of black second graders and their perception that dialect speech is "bad." (2) Use of dialect speech does not interfere with the speaker's ability to identify words in traditional orthography. The study established language…

In order to help kindergartners and first graders who need extra work on their literacy skills, this book offers a plan for teaching phonemic awareness and letter sound correspondence. The plan in the book is a developmentally sequenced, 11-week program to give students repeated opportunities to practice and enhance their beginning reading and…

Noting that children in literate societies all learn the sound-symbol relationships of their languages but that orthographies, sound-symbol relationships, and societal attitudes toward literacy differ, the essays in this book explore both the universal and the culturally constrained aspects of the process of learning to read. Following an…

The emphasis of this book is on theory and research in spelling. It also includes practical information for the classroom teacher by noting teaching principles and generalizations that can guide spelling instruction. The book contains 12 chapters dealing with the following topics: (1) developmental concepts of word; (2) what a word is; (3)…

This nontechnical guide for parents and teachers examines learning to read from infants' babbling to the fluent reading of children reading independently for pleasure. Chapter 1, "Baby Speaks," describes language development in infancy. Chapter 2, "Our Alphabet: Language by Ear and by Eye," presents the alphabetic system and…