Writing skills are essential for success in the 21st-century school and workplace, but most classrooms devote far more time to reading instruction, with writing often addressed in isolation or excluded. In this insightful professional development resource and text, leading researchers discuss why and how to integrate writing and reading…

In England, Higher Education institutions, together with the schools whose staff they train, are being required to incorporate synthetic phonics as one of the key approaches to the teaching of reading. Yet even if synthetic phonics can be identified as one of the component "skills" of reading, an assumption vigorously contested in this…

In order to systemically improve student achievement in elementary literacy, a large urban school district partnered with a local university to develop a model for high-quality professional development that hopefully would result in long-term changes in teachers' literacy instructional/practices. Schools were selected based on their Adequate…

Concludes that as little phonics instruction as is necessary should be presented to help the learner achieve increasing independence in the various coding tasks. (RB)

Reports on the authors' revisiting of the reading process using proficient adult readers (advanced graduate students in a school of education) as their informants. Begins with a brief overview of the current debate concerning the nature of reading and explains how they went about investigating the issue. Discusses what they learned from their…

Discusses a study which sought to determine the extent to which teachers or prospective teachers can discriminate among generalizations about phonics of varying degrees of usefulness. (JM)

This book is directed at the pre-service undergraduate and the in-service graduate student who must possess basic knowledge of how the orthography of American English is structured while pursuing the requisite skills for teaching competence in reading. Chapter one is a brief introduction. Chapter two, "Phonetics, Phonemics, and Phonics," considers…

Shares a letter the author (a professor emeritus of Language Arts education) wrote to her state assembly member in California in response to legislation, based on a very limited definition of reading, that imposed the use of phonics on school districts. Notes that the letter can serve as a model for other educators to respond to their legislator.…

Concludes that college professors who teach preservice reading courses do not agree on what reading terms should be taught, their definitions, or the generalizations to be used in phonic analysis. (RB)

To determine whether preservice teachers could articulate, in writing, appropriate instructional strategies for teaching phonics, a study surveyed 83 elementary education students selected randomly from all students enrolled in a reading methods course at Brigham Young University. Students completed one of three questionnaires assessing what…

Results of the examination of teacher's manuals, grades one through four, that accompany a number of basal reading series used in schools in Staten Island, New York, indicated that although teacher's manuals included many phonic rules, none of the examined texts gave any utility or frequency data or cited any research studies to support the…

Undergraduates learned to read words spelled with novel letters under phonics or whole-word conditions through several overlearning trials, and vocalization latency of word recognition responses was measured. Whole-word instruction resulted in word recognition mechanisms similar to fully automated mechanisms, but phonics instruction did not.…

Discusses the author's varied experiences in teaching reading, including teaching seventh grade pupils in the West Bank of Jordan, taking graduate courses in reading, and being an elementary school principal and a university professor. Suggests the need for a rational balance between whole language and phonics. (RS)

Describes a workshop on phonics for preservice teachers developed by a staunch whole language literacy teacher. Notes that evaluations by participants were mixed at best. (RS)

Elaborated by a group of teacher educators and reading researchers, this monograph serves as a forum for responses to the federally sponsored 1985 report, "Becoming a Nation of Readers." It consists of the following essays, listed here with their authors: (1) "Reading Instruction and Underlying Metaphors in 'Becoming a Nation of…