In this webinar, Janice A. Dole, Professor and Director of the Reading and Literacy Program in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Utah, discussed different strategies for delivering literacy instruction to meet a range of student needs, including the ways in which teachers can collaborate with reading specialists to…

Discusses Keith Stanovich's essay "Romance and Reality" published in the December 1993/January 1994 issue of "Reading Teacher." Reviews Stanovich's arguments about reading research relating to phonics, reading processes, phonological awareness, and reading difficulties. (RS)

All consonant sounds involving the sound /y/ omit the letter Y, such as few, cute, immune, and view. Perhaps 75% of high school students whose formal reading level is below seventh grade will not be able to pronounce these words that contain the "invisible" Y sound. Good students usually do not have to be taught this pattern, but average…

Uses a tongue-in-cheek approach and enumerates 12 culprits that historically have created havoc among children in their quest to learn to read and understand the English language, including word attack skills, graphemic-phonemic relationships, compound words, homographs, semantic analysis, and more. (SR)

Suggests that children often get confusing or conflicting instruction that possibly exacerbates initial problems. Reviews approaches to teaching children with reading problems. Concludes that effective phonics instruction for children with reading problems is both novel and systematic. Recommends a two-pronged solution: provide one clear and…

The article provides a brief review of the literature regarding current practices for teaching reading to adults and children. Much of the methodology that has proven effective with school-aged poor readers, such as the teaching of phonics in a direct instruction manner, may be quite appropriate for use at the adult level. (Author/DB)

States research shows that decoding skills are associated with phonological awareness, the ability to segment and manipulate sounds in words. Suggests this ability is associated with reading failure in many nonreaders, reading difficulties in poor readers, and individual differences among average readers. Considers that although phonological…

This paper offers a rationale for integrating phonics with reading instruction for students with reading disabilities. It then suggests that direct teaching of sounds be provided by constructing "soundsheets" with rows of sound/letter combinations taken directly from the text the child will read after practicing the sounds. (JDD)

Provides a look at primary grade children's abilities, inabilities, and requirements to use phonics as a beginning reading strategy and suggests a model that facilitates children's application of phonics while reading. (FL)

This book examines the studies of leading researchers who have testified in various hearings and promoted policy and legislation on behalf of skills-emphasis learning, especially those financed by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). The book not only identifies each claim, it also analyzes the research that backs…

This paper argues that the ability to rapidly compare phonemes is a primary sensory-cognitive function underlying self-correction in word recognition and spelling and thus, indirectly, reading comprehension. Such phonological defects can be addressed both preventively and remedially using procedures that are fundamentally different from typical…

This interview with Dr. Michael Pressley discusses the hurdles that struggling readers confront when comprehending text, teaching methods that can be used for improving reading comprehension, the role of special educators and reading specialists in the education of struggling readers, and the need for teachers to teach reading comprehension…

Advocates of high standards and expectations usually believe that gaps in reading achievement can be eliminated with good teaching, but slow readers need a specially designed reading curriculum. The teacher first needs to use an informal reading inventory to determine the student's reading level. Functioning generally on a higher level than…

This article examines characteristics of low-performing readers, especially their poor word recognition skills; compares approaches to teaching word recognition to slow-learning children; identifies characteristics of successful methods of teaching word recognition; and concludes that phonics-based, thoroughly systematic, direct instruction is…

This interview with Dr. Candace Bos, a professor of special education at the University of Arizona, discusses the need for informed, flexible teaching when working with students with learning disabilities, and the importance of addressing phonological awareness, decoding and fluency, comprehension, and content area reading. (CR)