This issue presents eight essays all on the theme of how young children can become strong and successful lifelong readers. "Seeking Common Ground" (Lee Sherman) reviews the debate over how best to teach young children to read. "In the Beginning" (Catherine Paglin) suggests that by reading aloud to young children and filling their world with print,…

In this study relationships between class size and 688 first grade students' academic achievement in reading, listening, and mathematics were examined in the 1986-87 and 1987-88 school years. Achievement test scores of 338 children in classes of 20 children each in l987-88 were compared with test data of 350 first grade children in classes of 27…

The sensitivity of the cumulative cloze task to the effects of contextual buildup across units of discourse larger than the sentence was investigated, with three experiments focusing on a comparative analysis of proficient and developmental readers. In cumulative cloze, a single target word is deleted from a passage and replaced by the same…

This study of eighth graders investigates the effects of Kindergarten attendance on (1) Basic Skills Test (BST) performance and (2) the incidence of grade retention (non-promotion). To accomplish the first purpose, over 64,000 eighth grade pupils in the public schools of Tennessee were administered the BST. On each answer sheet of the BST pupils…

This report discusses the development of procedures for establishing teacher estimates of minimal acceptable, desired, and predicted levels of student performance on specific reading items and across reading skill areas. Statewide estimates were obtained by collecting and averaging item estimates from samples of teachers throughout the state, and…

The purpose of this investigation was to describe the relationship of perceptual-motor abilities as measured on the Purdue Perceptual-Motor Survey (PMS) to reading. All children who came to the University of Georgia Reading Clinic and who met the criteria of age, grade, and intelligence range were administered the PMS. The obtained scores on the…

Title VII of the Cooperative Research Act, now the Education Amendments of 1974, makes it possible for preschool age children to get started on basic reading skills early enough that they won't still be reading at the third-grade level when they enter high school. It also assures elementary students that their reading instruction won't be…

Less is known about how children read connected text in silent reading, and the range of reading strategies used in an ordinary primary school classroom, than about the reading of single words, oral reading and reading by skilled adults. This paper describes and evaluates a method of testing children's silent reading in which they are their own…

This paper discusses the rationale for designing better literacy assessment for elementary school children. The "Literacy Profile" is a literacy assessment procedure designed to collect data about groups of elementary students and track literacy development more effectively than current standardized tests. It assumes that literacy…

This study examined transitions into and out of poverty and welfare across 4-year time periods and their implications for math and reading skills and behavior among 10- and 11-year-olds. Analyses of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child Supplement indicate that even with controls for factors that select families into poverty,…

The effectiveness of methods teaching how to identify the main idea of expository paragraphs was tested using 47 remedial reading 6th through 11th graders. Tested were: strategy training; classification training; combined training; and practice only. Strategy training improved performance, while classification training only improved performance…

Introduced varied learning style (LS) strategies in five stages to special education and low-achieving general education students, removing them in the final phase. Pre- and posttests of reading achievement in each phase and assessment of students' LS preferences indicated that students with LS preferences benefited from LS accommodations,…

Presents strategies to help elementary students be more confident and prepared and score higher on standardized tests. The strategies involve briefly reviewing sample tests to familiarize students with common test formats, then focusing on strategies built into their reading, writing, math, science, and social studies plans. (SM)

Examined relations between phonological processing and emerging individual differences in math computation skills. Found that phonological memory, access rate to phonological codes in memory, and phonological awareness were uniquely associated with growth in number of computation procedures mastered from 92.5 to 134.8 months. Phonological…

In order to assess the relationship between cerebellar deficits and dyslexic tendencies in a non-clinical sample, 27 primary school children aged 8-9 completed a cerebellar soft signs battery and were additionally assessed for reading age, sequential memory, picture arrangement and knowledge of common sequences. An average measure of the soft…