The vocabulary lists from five basal readers were examined in an effort (1) to determine what information is taught in the form of phonic generalizations in current, primary-level basal readers; (2) to examine intraprogram reliability of those generalizations; and (3) to determine whether the content of generalization instruction had changed since…

Teaching children to read letters first is regarded by many theorists as the foundation on which the teaching of words should be based. To test this assumption, 26 nursery school children were presented four items (two letters and two words) in a paired associate learning paradigm. The subjects were randomly divided into two groups for the purpose…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether a meaning-emphasis or a code-emphasis method of teaching beginning reading to first-grade children was most efficacious. The following procedures were employed: establishment of a workable definition of the reading process, development of an experimental design in which the control of natural…

The effects of four language units to teach inner-city children to read words and syllables were compared using 86 children from 4 kindergarten classes in an Oakland, California, elementary school. The language units and beginning reader approaches utilizing them were: the grapheme/phoneme (synthetic), the morpheme (similar spelling pattern), the…

Describes a program that associates phonics instruction with children's earliest reading and writing, using the ERIS method to teach sound/letter correspondences and to provide opportunities for writing and reading. (NKA)

Combining the language experience approach and phonics instruction, this guide provides parents and early childhood teachers a comprehensive resource for developing a strong foundation for pre-readers. The guide offers over 1,000 activities, games, fingerplays, songs, tongue-twisters, poems, and stories for the letters of the alphabet to develop a…

Gives advanced and novice readers in grade one and older disabled readers nonword reading and spelling tasks. Finds that disabled readers read as many nonwords and spelled as many words as beginning readers, indicating equivalent alphabetic knowledge. Finds that disabled readers took significantly more trials to read 16 target words, indicating…

Results of 6 experiments with 109 Australian preschool children favor training in phoneme identity over segmentation as a component of initial reading instruction because it is easier to implement and its relation to alphabetic insight is stronger. Implications for the initial reading curriculum are discussed. (SLD)

Assesses speed, accuracy, and types of errors in decoding lists of words and pseudo words and performance in two phonemic awareness tasks for first- and second-grade German and American children. Suggests that successful reading in English depends upon more complex grapheme to phoneme correspondence rules than does reading in German. (SC)

Three studies examined sources of learning by which children, very early in learning to read, formed correspondences between letters and phonemes when these were not explicitly taught in the whole-language instruction they received. Findings of these studies have implications for the question of how early in learning to read children are able to…

This article addresses translating phonological awareness research for classroom reading instruction. It presents a practical overview of phonological awareness development and its relationship to beginning reading. Formal and informal assessment methods of children's phonological awareness are presented, and strategies are described for…

This article reviews research on effective classroom reading instruction that finds dramatic reduction in reading failure occurs when explicit instruction is provided in phonemic awareness and decoding skills, word recognition and text processing, construction of meaning, vocabulary, spelling, and writing. The need for small-group instruction for…

This article describes the usage of linguistic units and instructional strategies that facilitate word recognition for Latino kindergarten students who are beginning to read in Spanish. This case study was based on coding videotaped reading and language arts instruction of two bilingual kindergarten teachers at the beginning, middle, and end of…

Names hold great meaning for children and are, for many, the first word they learn to recognize by sight. Children have a great interest in learning to write their names as well as the names of their family and friends. Adults working with young children can take advantage of this interest to introduce a variety of early literacy concepts. Using…

A study investigated the factors influencing the English word identification performance of Spanish-speaking beginning readers. Thirty-two Spanish-speaking students (in kindergarten and first grade) from two urban schools who were identified as beginning, nonfluent readers were administered tests of letter naming, Spanish phonemic awareness,…