A study examined the effects of preschool reading intervention procedures on the knowledge about reading (reading readiness) of the subjects as they entered kindergarten. One such intervention, carried out for two consecutive years, involved giving low and middle income parents packets of several small, easy-to-read books and guidelines for using…

Preschool children's knowledge of printed words and letters was studied longitudinally, in order to achieve a definition and an ordering of reading readiness activities. Middle-class children were tested to determine what they knew about print, they were given word learning and word recognition tasks, and their parents returned questionnaires…

Early reading should be studied from three perspectives: the function of print, the form of print, and the conventions of print. In so doing, it may be possible to avoid some of the hazards that have plagued the field, such as unsubstantiated assumptions about beginning reading and how it should be taught, erroneous beliefs that maturation plays…

Defining emergent as the process of becoming and literacy as the interrelatedness of reading and writing in young children's development, this paper reviews emergent literacy research and relates it to beginning reading and writing instruction. The first section of the paper describes the social and linguistic contexts for literacy, reviewing…

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.…