Shared Reading is a powerful teaching technique for teaching beginning reading. Technologies such as Interactive Whiteboards now make Shared Reading much easier to do. Large texts are projected on the whiteboard for Choral reading, and interactive features allow students to learn about letter-sound correspondences, spelling patterns, punctuation,…

Several decades of research have established the critical role of phonemic awareness in the development of beginning reading. In particular, phonemic awareness makes early phonics instruction useful for children and facilitates their ability to blend letter sounds while decoding words, to learn sight words reliably, and to spell phonetically. A…

Argues that phonemic awareness instruction should be a thoughtful, conscious component of early literacy programs (without replacing other crucial areas of instruction). Discusses what phonemic awareness is and how it differs from auditory discrimination, phonetics, or phonics. Describes what phonemic awareness instruction looks like in the…

Discusses some of the reasons why basal readers confuse two long u sounds. (RB)

Discusses the use of syllabication in teaching decoding to beginning readers. (RB)

Examines what is entailed in effective phonics instruction and shows how such instruction can be integrated into a wide variety of approaches to the teaching of beginning reading. Discusses nine guidelines for exemplary phonics instruction that can be incorporated into classrooms using basal readers, whole-language philosophy, or shared reading of…

Suggests that teaching words with a regular phonetic structure first will help children learn, and presents lists of words with regular phonetic structure and three procedures teachers can use in an instructural program. (JM)

Describes the concept of phonemic awareness and offers suggestions to classroom teachers on how to enhance phonemic awareness in their students. (PRA)

Reviews research on the question of how to best teach letter-sound correspondences in beginning reading instruction. Describes a new, child-friendly, research-based way of teaching letter-sound correspondences to English- and Spanish-speaking children, which is not only explicit, systematic, and extensive, but also context embedded and meaningful.…

This study, which extends Jeffrey and Samuels' study, indicates that children taught "sounds" learned more grapheme-phoneme correspondences and read more transfer words than did those taught "words." (HOD)

Describes letterbox lessons in which children learn the alphabetic code, spelling words by placing letters in boxes that show the number of phonemes in words, and later reading what they have spelled. Discusses materials, how to teach a letterbox lesson, and effectiveness of these lessons. (SR)

Discusses experiments that provide information about the reading processes involved in mapping phonemes onto alphabetic symbols; suggests several techniques for helping children both to differentiate among the short vowel sounds and to associate sound and symbol. Focuses on the needs of beginning readers who are experiencing reading difficulties.…

Results of a study of early reading responses of young children in a Finnish preschool challenge the belief that grapheme-phoneme regularity is a critical factor in beginning reading. (JM)

Reports that by combining a phonetic writing system with instruction in carefully selected clusters of related Chinese characters, Chinese schools can start children on productive reading at an early age with texts closer to their developed cognitive levels. (FL)

Describes Marie Clay's word boxes that help children attend to phonological and orthographic features of words, developing phonemic awareness and improving word recognition and spelling. Describes a study showing that the use of word boxes with several elementary school students with learning disabilities was effective for improving and…