To whet the curiosity and interest of teachers who may be frustrated with the reading vocabulary achievement of pupils, an informal study compared Piaget's cognitive development theory, recent brain research, and the reading process, and examined how the theory and research apply to reading instruction. The Gestalt Process Approach to teaching…

A study investigated what is done with reading in kindergarten, specifically: (1) what is done and for what amount of time to prepare kindergartners for reading and to teach them to read; (2) what accounts for what is or is not done; and (3) how differences in children's abilities affect what is or is not done. Forty-two kindergarten classes from…

The student reader-workbook, third part of the "Ch'al" series, presents activities to be done orally or by writing. Pages of the workbook are divided into two or three frames; each activity for a given frame should be completed before moving on to the next frame. A total of 23 words (14 consonants and 15 vowels) in the Navajo language are…

A study examined hierarchical relationships among three developmental components of reading ability in grades 1 through 3. It was predicted that semantic skills develop initially, followed by letter identification skills, phonological skills, and visual skills. Reading ability was assessed with a word identification task. The semantic components…

A small-group procedure for teaching consonant sounds was tested in two studies with rural kindergarten and first-grade students whose teachers had been trained to use the procedure by means of a videotape model and a live demonstration. In the first study, done at the end of the 1974-1975 school year, the kindergarten and first-grade participants…

Despite recent efforts at compensatory education, thousands of children still go through first grade each year without learning to read. More often than not, these are children of the poor. The underlying assumption of this study is that the major attempt at educational compensation for disadvantaged children have failed because of fundamental…

This study examined the effects of two programs which differed in the methods they employed to develop reading readiness. The two methods represented were a language experience approach and a phonics approach. The subjects were children from kindergarten classes in two elementary schools in Flint, Michigan. All subjects were randomly assigned…

Data from four of the Cooperative First Grade Studies (1964-1965) were reanalyzed for four first grade projects, (Fry, Hayes, Mazurkiewicz, and Tanyzer). These projects were selected because they compared the Initial Teaching Alphabet approach with traditional orthography-basal reader approaches. The focal point of this reanalysis was to study the…

Describes a stage structure concern for children and phonics. Discusses that among all of the cognitive concepts and abilities constructed by young children, quantitative operations are most closely associated with early successful use of phonics. (JK)

There are continuing debates about the best approach to teaching reading--phonics or whole language. The most valuable link to learning to read is phonological or phonemic awareness, as soon as the alphabetic system is mastered. After phonemic awareness has been established, students enter the orthographic stage where they can process longer…

In recent years, the focus on reading instruction has turned to the primary grade levels. Debates over phonics, whole language, and balanced literacy approaches occur among researchers, educators, and parents. Using a balanced approach in the classroom has received the most support from teachers and researchers, according to five related articles…

This 1996 technical report looks at California Early Literacy Learning (CELL), a staff development program designed to help elementary teachers strengthen their teaching of reading and writing. Reading Recovery and other research-based teaching methodologies have been organized into a framework for classroom instruction, and training in the…

This issue focuses on the developmental path that children typically take when learning to read. The purpose is to help parents take steps to ensure that their children will make the transition from learning to read to reading to learn by the end of third grade. An introductory section includes two articles: "Parents, Children, and…

To enable all children to learn to read with confidence and fluency, beginning reading instruction programs must offer balanced instruction that provides children with a variety of experiences. A full discussion of all the dimensions of a balanced program of beginning reading instruction is beyond the scope of this booklet. Rather, this booklet…

This report stresses the need to incorporate various methods of teaching as a means of developing an integrated curriculum to address the lack of phonetic skills amongst second grade and kindergarten students. The target population of Site A consisted of a kindergarten classroom in a medium-sized district of a growing middle class community…