Nursery rhymes and written phonics used in a meaningful context are valuable teaching methods which can be applied in a whole language classroom or in conjunction with a basal reading program. Because nursery rhymes are rooted in oral tradition they lend themselves to oral presentation. They provide forms for the oral beginnings of the best of…

Blending means smoothing together subword segments to try to identify a spoken word. Research suggests that beginning readers need to blend to combine the phonemes they "sound out" into a recognizable approximation of a known word. Popular wisdom presumes blending is easiest when the segments of words are whispered and when syllables are…

This paper offers seven practical suggestions to teachers who are teaching phonics to hard-to-teach children (the learning disabled, the educable mentally retarded, slow learners, and the culturally disadvantaged) and who are not experiencing the success they desire. The suggestions are made under the following topics: (1) cumulative learning and…

Teachers working with a language experience approach to reading may use word-sorting activities as a means of exploring the letter/sound concepts and semantic concepts that children are forming. Using words that are already in a child's reading vocabulary, words that the child has made into sight vocabulary, and words that the child has requested…