This study investigated the effect of preschool-wide, teacher-implemented, phoneme-focused phonological awareness (PA) and letter-sound knowledge (LSK) instruction, on raising code-based school-entry reading readiness for children with Spoken Language Difficulties (SLD) and Typical Development (TD), when supported by weekly coaching by trainee…

There are 26 letters in the English language. These letters, in various combinations, represent the 44 sounds in the language. Teaching students the basic letter-sound combinations gives them access to sounding out approximately 84% of the words in English print. There needs to be equal amounts of time need to be spent on teaching the meanings of…

"Waterford Early Reading Level One"[TM] is an emergent literacy curriculum that uses computer-based technology to prepare children for reading. It begins with a tutorial to familiarize the child with the computer and mouse and a reading placement evaluation to assess and determine whether a child should work on "Level One"…

Discusses the steps involved in and the preparation necessary for learning to read (decode) and to comprehend what is read. (JM)

Describes how primary teachers can use decoding strategies within a literature-based, whole-language setting. A three-stage approach involves the book stage (real reading), the word stage (learning words), and the letter-sound stage (learning sounds). The article provides sample activities. (SM)

This study evaluated the effectiveness of phonological awareness instruction with 61 kindergarten children in two schools who had been identified as low in phonological awareness. The children received either: (1) instruction at the phoneme level only, (2) instruction at the onset-rime level before instruction at the phoneme level, or (3) no…

Noting that children in literate societies all learn the sound-symbol relationships of their languages but that orthographies, sound-symbol relationships, and societal attitudes toward literacy differ, the essays in this book explore both the universal and the culturally constrained aspects of the process of learning to read. Following an…

To determine the factors accounting for children's growth in decoding skill, a study examined school entering characteristics--age, sex, ethnicity, and developmental abilities--and school-influenced skills and characteristics--phonemic awareness, letter-name knowledge, basal text, and place in series--of approximately 100 grade one students.…