Young children learn many important things about language from the television and radio ads they encounter that can help them learn to read and write. They learn that print carries messages that are personally important to them, that whatever can be said can also be written, what some forms of written language look like, and that language use can…

Children are ready to learn to read when they are young and enjoy learning to read when they understand each step in the reading process, so that their cognitive growth is significatnly stimulated. This book presents the structural approach to teaching both reading readiness skills and reading and points out that teachers and parents must…

Concern about typical early identification procedures used with kindergarten children to predict potential reading failure is expressed in this paper. A diagnostic procedure for screening kindergarten children and then prescribing an individualized program for each child is described. The screening battery--Prediction with Diagnostic Qualities…

The Reading Improvement Services Everywhere (RISE) project was launched by the National PTA so that PTA's throughout the nation could participate in the federally initiated Right-to-Read effort. It is felt that the parents are responsible to see that the child's learning motivation and readiness are well developed. Project RISE focuses on what can…

Reading instruction via television has encouraged learning of basic decoding skills.

Describes ways for developing visual imagery in the early childhood education program, preparing children for discrimination learning and reading instruction. (RL)

Argues that wordless books allow prereading children to create their own stories, enhance vocabulary acquisition, help children develop "top to bottom" and "right to left" concepts, and promote observation, sequential, visual, and inferential thinking. Describes several ways to use wordless books. Includes bibliography of 36…

This discussion of the role of structured guidance in facilitating cognitive development presents the author's point of view regarding a current issue in early childhood education. (WY)

In a follow-up study, it was found that children with good early phonological awareness had well-developed lexical and sublexical reading and spelling procedures. Results suggest that early phonological skills relate more strongly to the development of sublexical than lexical processing systems. (Author/LB)

Although implementing the school readiness goal is clearly a shared responsibility of parents, schools, and community, activities beyond the schoolhouse must be matched by internal school efforts, including accessing knowledge and attitudes; evaluating existing strategies in training, screening, testing, service linkages, and classroom practices;…

Researchers find that two factors hinder children's literacy development: parents and other adults who limit children's experiences and their use of language; and the Federal government's goal that children must come to school "ready to learn." Schools might interpret this push for readiness as a license to teach all children the same…

Two studies were conducted to investigate the predictive validity of prekindergarten and pre-grade 1 screening checklists. In the first study, all 83 students registering for kindergarten at an elementary school were administered Austin and Lafferty's prekindergarten checklist. Toward the end of the school year, the children were administered the…

The purpose of this study was to determine if the relationships among alphabet skills, auditory discrimination, and visual discrimination for five-year-olds prior to kindergarten were similar to those found in studies of subskills of first grade children. The sample consisted of 23 middle class nursery school children between the ages of 5.1 and…

Described is "Talk Time", an experimental project designed to promote oral language and reading readiness for rural, language deficient, first grade children. (LS)

This paper proposes a Piagetian model for an early childhood science education program which provides opportunities for children to learn logical thinking and to prepare them for reading and writing. Discussed are suggestions for science areas of concentration, abilities to consider, substructure levels, cognitive thinking skills, and schemes. A…