Concludes that, while art activities can be defended as a way of adding variety or diversion in the teaching of reading, the proposition that they have a direct and positive influence on children's learning to read cannot be supported. (GT)

Reports a series of experiments on the difficulty of reading and following instructions and describes activities used to help children who were poor readers learn to read instructions for specific purposes. (GT)

Concludes that in reading words the understanding of meaning and the knowledge of probable letter sequences has a function at least as significant as familiarity with letter shapes. (RB)

Concludes that the sight method of teaching reading is discredited by recent research findings. (RB)

Discusses four areas of reading research in which the results seem to collide with views held by practicing teachers and provides an explanation of the contradictions. (RB)

Contrasts the views of teachers and students concerning topic work, finding that teachers see it as more valuable than do children. (FL)

Suggests 10 classroom-tested activities that improve reading comprehension. (DF)

Summarizes studies of strategies used in silent reading and in locating information in books, noting that the findings provide information relevant to the teaching of silent reading. Points out that more work is needed both in the observation of reading strategies and in the discovery of effective means of teaching these strategies. (GT)

Focuses on four kinds of reading/writing actions which readers and writers need to perform and which are based on two actions necessary to phonic competence: the blending of sounds together (synthesis) and the splitting of a sound into its component parts (analysis). (JM)

Describes how one teacher helped students in her third grade class, who had below average spelling and reading skills, improve their reading achievement by using a structured, graded, multifaceted approach to spelling instruction. (ARH)

Outlines the contents of reading materials kits designed to be used to improve the functional reading ability of adolescents in Great Britain. (VJ)

Describes recent, major contributions to both sides of the debate between phonics instruction and the "meaning-based" approaches. Argues that it is too early to evaluate the debate, but that a tentative evaluation of the evidence favors meaning-based approaches. (RS)