This teacher's manual presents the Spanish decoding skills. Used prior to basic Spanish language primers, it teaches the basic skills necessary for reading Spanish. The manual is organized into four sections. Section 1 contains day-by-day instructional plans; section 2 contains general information concerning the mechanics of the Spanish language…

Discusses the difficulties encountered when teaching sound-symbol correspondences in beginning reading. (JM)

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)

Reviews the history of phonics and whole word instruction, arguing that students' reading proficiency does benefit from learning fundamentals of phonics. (HTH)

Dr. Seuss wrote in "Horton Hears a Who," "Don't give up! I believe in you all! A person's a person no matter how small." What a beautiful, encouraging message this is to his readers. Millions of children can't figure out the words on the pages of their books, because they don't know the speech sounds of the alphabet. This is called the alphabetic…

Intended for teachers of grades K-2, this book is a practical resource manual designed to provide step-by-step suggestions for assessing and instructing students' phonics skills and strategies. It presents phonological awareness as a foundation and preparation for phonics instruction and integrates the two so they become reciprocal. In addition,…

Noting that the role of phonics in reading and writing has become as much a political issue as it has an educational one, this pamphlet offers a position statement regarding the role of phonics in a total reading program. It begins with three assertions regarding phonics and the teaching of reading: (1) the teaching of phonics is an important…

An intense debate exists around the most beneficial and successful method for teaching young children how to read. On the one side is sight-reading or the look-say method which promotes learning to read by immediate recognition of words learned through "memorization." In contrast to the sight method, the phonics method aims at teaching…

At a literacy conference in December 1998, British Prime Minister Tony Blair defined phonics as "the skilled process of teaching children how the 44 sounds in the English language are represented by a letter or group of letters." But 4 years down the track, several recent reports from both national and international bodies continue to…

The teaching of phonics, the relationship of sounds to letters in an alphabetic language like English, is important for success in learning to read competently. Noting that there continues to be much debate as to what constitutes good phonics instruction, this paper presents a rather simple but basically sound and inexpensive approach for teaching…

There is a convergence of research evidence pointing to the critical role good phonics decoding skills play in good reading; however, there is no convergence in the research on precise development of reading strategies or on types, intensity, or duration of appropriate phonics instruction. Five unscientific assertions are often cited in phonics…

A method of teaching phonics to primary grade disabled readers which combines analytic, synthetic, and linguistic methods is described. The method involves starting with sight words, starting phonics synthetically with consonants, teaching other consonants analytically, adapting linguistic methods for vowels, and encouraging the use of context.…

Responds to criticism about the method of "assisted reading" and clarifies the author's beliefs about using the method as the first method of instruction. (MKM)

Reprints an exemplary article published in this journal in 1955, which points out that phonics is only one part of a total reading program. Emphasizes the fact that meaning for the reader must be the essential part of all reading instruction. (SR)