Describes the nature of the developmental spelling continuum. Considers the common instructional concerns of word selection, yearly and weekly routines, and organizing to meet the needs of poor spellers against the developmental backdrop. (MG)

The authors advocate that a high-quality curriculum is an important first step toward good teaching and successful learning. Good curriculum comes from knowing what students can do, can almost do, and need to learn how to do as readers, writers, and language users. In this book, the authors combine their experience and learning in literacy…

A study investigated the effect of properties of words and texts on the incidental learning of word meanings during normal reading. Subjects--352 students in third, fifth, and seventh grades--read either expository or narrative passages selected from grade-level textbooks, and after six days were tested on their knowledge of difficult words from…

To determine the effect of proofreading on spelling, a study was conducted with middle- and upper-middle-class students in four sixth-grade classes in two schools in Austin, Texas. Two classes were used as control groups, and two as experimental groups. Teachers of both groups participated in the planning sessions to prepare 14 lessons with…

Since the mastery of any subject matter depends on learning its key concepts--its language--content area teachers should use innovative vocabulary development exercises to help their students master the language of the subject area. Teachers should try to coordinate vocabulary study with other learning tasks instead of depending on dull,…

The reaction times (RTs) of 48 elementary school students in two word identification tasks were recorded to gauge the effects of orthographic and phonic structures. The subjects, high ability and low ability students from grades four and five and from grades two and three, either matched a word to one of two pictures on display or decided if a…

This guide is designed to help teachers, staff members responsible for teacher training, and reading supervisors provide better reading instruction. The skills that lead to mature reading are arranged on eight levels of developmental sequence. Level A is concerned with developing prereading skills. Levels B to D treat initiating and developing…

This study compares the effect of the objectives-based test collections of the Instructional Objectives Exchange (10X) on reading comprehension and word-attack skills of fifth-grade students in a basal reader program. The 10X, a nonprofit educational organization, was established in the late 1960s to provide educators with instructional materials…

A committee of Oklahoma educators prepared this reading activity guide as an aid for elementary school teachers to improve their students' reading skills. Described for each activity are the objective, necessary materials, and the procedure. For many activities, a variation or variations also are suggested. The activities are arranged in the…

Investigates differences in performance on a task involving judgments of word-likeness between a group of reading-disabled children and normal readers matched to them either in reading level or age. Shows that although the knowledge of orthographic structure of reading-disabled children matches that of younger normal readers, reading-disabled…

Created by contributing teachers to provide Indiana teachers with new ideas for classroom reading activities, this set of cards (which can be kept in a resource file) may be used to motivate, challenge, and reinforce reading skills. The first card lists considerations for developing games, while the remaining cards describe approximately 40…

The primary purpose of this study was to provide empirical evidence for the assumption that if the essential subskills of word attack are mastered, then functional word attack ability will result. To obtain such evidence, the study was designed to test the functional word attack ability of 140 elementary school students who had been taught the…

This booklet is written for use in university and college courses on the teaching of reading in the elementary grades. It is also written to assist supervisors, teachers, teacher assistants, and student teachers in knowing what to teach in reading and in planning activities to help children learn to read to their maximum potential. Parents also…

The procedures used to develop a list of concepts taught in fourth-grade language arts are described. Thirty concepts from the list were randomly sampled and then analyzed. Analysis consisted of listing examples and non-examples, relevant and irrelevant attributes, subordinates and supraordinates, and a definition and principle for each concept.…

This book offers essential guidance to preservice and inservice teachers seeking to create, revise, and/or add new strategies to the teaching of the language arts block. The book's focus is on how to implement effective strategies in the context of a well-planned classroom and smoothly choreographed daily schedule. A series of case studies in the…