The teaching of reading has been a source of contentious debate for many years. Margaret Meek Spencer contributed her passion for the importance of specific texts to help children learn to read. In addition to the kinds of texts to be used, important aspects of the debate include the relationship between national curriculum policies and robust…

To validate a group phonics test designed to measure students' phonics knowledge, a study examined possible causal relationships of phonics knowledge and sight word recognition, sight word fluency, general reading fluency, and reading comprehension. Subjects, 95 first graders, 95 second graders, and 95 third graders chosen at random from 3 schools…

It was proposed that the young child's awareness of the phonology of language would influence early reading success. Results revealed a strong relationship between the first grader's reading performance and two measures of his/her phonological awareness, invented spelling and phoneme segmentation abilities. (Author/RD)