Examined in this study was instruction in two reading intervention programs, Reading Recovery and Reading Mastery, in the context of a statewide early reading initiative's first year of implementation. Through observations of 15 teachers, investigated in this study was the instructional focus of the intervention lessons and the extent to which…

In this review the authors considered all the documents pertaining to the teaching of reading in Botswana primary schools from independence to the present. The purpose was to get the big picture with regard to the status of reading education. The results are reported in four categories: (1) Reading in the Classroom; (2) Reading and Policy; (3)…

Parent tutoring offers potential as a means for assisting the large percentage of students who need to improve their reading skills. The primary purpose of this study was to examine the impact of a reading fluency intervention program when used by parents in the home during the summer months. Specifically, this study evaluated the effects of the…

This study stemmed from a concern of the perceived decline in students' reading motivation after the early years of schooling. This research investigated the effectiveness of online eBooks on eight grade 1 students' reading motivation. Eight students were given ten 25-minute sessions with the software programs over 15 weeks. Qualitative data were…

The purpose of this study was to explore the connections between young children's oral language vocabulary and children's reading of written language in beginning reading books. Oral language has been viewed as the foundation for emergent reading development as it provides the semantic base, syntactic base and phonological base for successfully…

This article reviews "The Early Reading Diagnostic Assessment, Second Edition" (ERDA-Second Edition), a norm-referenced individually administered diagnostic measure of early reading skills as described in Reading First federal legislation (Part B, Subpart 1 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as amended by the No Child Left…

Anthropomorphism as a cue in word learning was investigated in relation to illustration and no-picture cue conditions in trials to criterion and word memory tasks with kindergarten children. Results are discussed. (Author/DF)

Children who are reading well as they enter first grade usually have extensive vocabularies and good retention. Teachers should assess the students' various levels of reading ability (word recognition and comprehension) to plan a program with differentiated methods. (CL)

Finds that the home literacy environments of European American and African American families did not differ as strongly as those of middle-income and low-income families, with many low-income parents (regardless of race) placing relatively more emphasis on structured activities and on ostensible component skills in literacy. (SR)

Reviews research discussing early writing and invented spellings of young children as indicators of their readiness to learn to read and write. (MKM)

Determines the potential benefits of using literature webbing in books with predictable narratives. Finds webbing to be an effective means for improving comprehension, reading ability, and story structure knowledge. (RS)

Describes the reading skills of postkindergarten precocious readers. Finds no meaningful weaknesses in their average skill pattern; their strengths mirrored weakness identified among disabled readers; they were especially rapid text readers; they drew on especially strong phonological analysis skills as well as orthographic processes; but average…

Three experiments using beginning readers of Dutch (seven and eight years old) as subjects provide evidence that visually recognizing the unique graphemic structure of words is important in word identification, even in early stages in learning to read. Results are discussed regarding the importance of building accurate graphemic entries in the…

Concludes that potential users of the Clymer-Barrett Readiness Test should exercise caution in drawing inferences or conclusions about children on the basis of anything other than raw score data associated with the measure. (FL)

Examines the role of early reading instruction on the nonword reading strategies employed by beginning readers. Describes how three groups of children were following either: the Early Reading Research project; the National Literacy Project; or usual classroom practice. Suggest that early reading instruction does have a significant impact on early…