Describes how a group of professionals at a school near San Antonio, Texas, worked together to change the reading curriculum from a traditional basal reading program to an approach built around quality literature. (SR)

Investigates young children's developing understanding of three essential features of book language (i.e. autonomy, conventionality, unique grammar) in two curricular genres (i.e. narrative and expository) in a literature-based, multigrade (1st-3rd) classroom. Demonstrates emergent understanding of autonomy, limited familiarity with…

Explored the progress of 15 first-graders as they learned about baling hay via a mnemonic visualization process. Using an integrated picture and a meaningful organized explanation of the hay-baling process produced superior learning, compared with a control group's progress using conventional guided reading techniques. (MLH)

Discusses the author's experience as a kindergarten teacher with students who have had a wide range of literacy within the home. Notes how some parents "misuse" the "Hooked on Phonics" program and their children gain no benefit from it. Proposes that educators lower "the legal reading age," providing all children--even the youngest ones--with…

Describes how reading and art have taught the author to slow down. Discusses how she wants her students to leave the third-grade classroom reading--reading words, reading pictures, and reading their world. Considers how one student slows down her reading, pays attention to her thinking, and begins to see the pictures and connections that poems…

Finds teaching prereading kindergartners in the rime analogy strategy and prereading skills resulted in more reading than teaching either alone. Notes many children developed the untaught abilities of medial and final phoneme identity and the letter recoding reading strategy; and children were able to generalize the rime analogy strategy to read…

Addressing beginning reading instruction in urban schools, this article proposes that a curriculum gap exists in many K-3 classrooms that operate under the guidelines of the No Child Left Behind Act and Reading First. The authors make a case for the inclusion of systematic and sustained instruction in comprehension, content knowledge, and writing…

This article synthesizes results from 5 studies that used noncertified tutors to work with at-risk primary-grade readers. Each of the studies featured (1) twice-weekly tutoring lessons that included guided reading, word study, and reading for fluency; and (2) supervision of the tutoring by a knowledgeable reading teacher. Results from the 5…

A reading instructor interested in reliving the experience of learning to read for the first time attempted to read "Androcles and the Lion" in Shavian Alphabet. The would-be reader of Shavian faces a page of hooks and slants completely unfamiliar, but there is no translation problem. As soon as the reader can pronounce out loud the…

Concludes that steps in instruction that seem logical to adults may not make sense to six-year-olds in beginning reading instruction. (RB)

Argues that extra encouragement stimulates a positive self-concept among students who encounter reading difficulties and describes one student's success. (RB)

Provides a preliminary look at the syntactic complexity of primary grade reading materials commonly used for initial reading instruction. (RB)

Confirms the hypothesis that readers mediate the identification of unfamiliar words by comparing the unknown word to known words and parts. (RB)

Demonstrates that discrimination training with verbal materials (words and letters) is generally more helpful than training with non-verbal forms. (RB)