This reader-friendly text examines the key foundational studies in early literacy. It addresses such essential questions as how research informs current practices and where the field still needs to go to provide the best learning opportunities for all children. Each chapter describes the methods and findings of one to five seminal studies,…

The aim of present research was to describe the relation of six-year-old children's attention and reading readiness skills (general knowledge, word comprehension, sentences, and matching) with their auditory reasoning and processing skills. This was a quantitative study based on scanning model. Research sampling consisted of 204 kindergarten…

This research was done to determine whether formal kindergarten training in alphabet and number names would result in a higher reading level for children at the end of grade 1. As part of an earlier research project, two classes of primarily middle-class kindergarten children received 8 weeks of training in alphabet and number names. Two control…

Noting that parent involvement could be the single most important factor in children's success in school, this book helps parents act as tutors in reading and writing for their kindergarten children. It offers both general guidelines and specific strategies and activities to use for accomplishing specific objectives, such as improving decoding…

Students entering first grade are not prepared to read. They lack the readiness skills that provide the foundation for success. Learning to read and write is a struggle, particularly for those students who have not had a variety of experience with reading and writing prior to entering school. In an effort to increase the readiness skills of…

A study was conducted to explore how children learn to read in kindergarten. The study employed a heuristic model that included entering ability, home background, instructional processes, home support for literacy development, and measures of student ability at the end of kindergarten. Children were tested, whole-day classroom observations were…

Cognitive abilities that predicted growth in response to a 12-week training program in phonological awareness were investigated in 100 kindergarten children. Findings suggested that growth in analytic awareness was predicted by invented spelling and general verbal ability, while growth in synthetic awareness was predicted by a combination of…

Determined that emergent literacy activities that experts identified as appropriate to instructional materials were not prominent in basal text materials. Found small differences between meaning- and decoding-oriented material in literary quality, letter-sound correspondence, and word identification. (BC)

A study examined the interrelationship among print-related skills developed prior to formal reading instruction and social class differences in these skills in 33 middle-class and working-class children attending one of two high quality, reading-oriented kindergarten classes. Two hypotheses were generated: (1) that correlations would emerge among…

An individualized, nongraded Title III/ESEA reading program to be used with children at kindergarten through third-grade levels has been developed at Moreland School in Moreland, Idaho. Using team teaching and individual and small group instruction, the program seeks to develop in the child prereading experiences, language experiences, expanded…

The second volume of this final report of a large study which detailed the day-to-day working of, and student response to, two philosophically different approaches to reading readiness as they were used in six Philadelphia kindergartens reports on the "traditional" approach. The background section distinguishes the traditional approach by its use…

Focused on embracing individual children in language/reading experiences through instructional guidance combined with acceptance and understanding, this teaching guide for beginning reading provides teaching-learning activities which are organized for easy reference. The first section presents a self-corrective pretest for teachers, with an…

A study was conducted to evaluate the impact of predictable stories given to children from low-income families over a two-year period. Phase one subjects were all the children (N=52) from four Headstart classes; phase two subjects were all the children who had participated in phase 1 and who entered kindergarten after their last year in Headstart.…