Reports results of a three-year longitudinal study exploring the evolution of young children's ideas about reading. Finds that there was only moderate consistency in the ages at which concepts emerged and that the sequence of conceptual development was quite uniform across these children. (SR)

Tests the statement in "Becoming a Nation of Readers" that kindergartners can name an average of 14 letters. Finds that a more realistic distribution is bi-modal in that most kindergartners know 8 or fewer letters, and only a few can name more than 20 letters. (RS)

It is argued that attention to effective evidence-based early reading interventions are a co-requisite to genuinely inclusive education, with implications not only for reading acquisition, but also for a range of other social and academic domains. This paper briefly describes some of the recent developments in reading research that have the…

Early reading instruction is important for all children, but especially for the disadvantaged, because the decision not to expose them to reading at an early age may result in an unrecoverable loss of intellectual potential. Reading readiness as an approach may exile children from literacy permanently because it is an abstract and alien process…

A study examined two contexts in teaching a language experience approach (LEA) reading lesson to kindergarten children. The five children--Black, Hispanic, and White students of varying ability levels--first developed a group story of their own using the Van Allen language experience approach. The teacher recorded the story, and the students wrote…

Unproven beliefs about the process of reading and its instruction and about the effects of maturation and social structure on learning have obscured the question of what children know about how to read. An alternate conceptualization proposes that to learn to read children must obtain experience in three reading contexts: the use of print and its…

To gain additional information about how young children actually develop and use literacy before entering school, four young children were studied indepth by means of family questionnaires, reading age tests, diagnostic subskill tests, and miscue analysis. Five months later, the children were again tested to see if reading age had increased and if…

A total of 107 Arkansas kindergarten teachers responded to a questionnaire designed to identify their attitudes and practices. The questionnaire elicited information concerning the teachers' experiential background, the methods and materials they used to teach reading skills, the prereading and reading skills taught, and their opinions about…

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…

Many authors report data showing a high relationship between visual perception and early reading. This study dealt with the prediction of later reading from early Frostig test scores and the determination of existing relationships between Frostig treatment and reading skills two years later. Two hundred and seventy-four beginning first graders in…

Describes the construction of a nonreading instrument (Preschool Reading Attitudes Scale) designed to assess attitudes toward reading in young children, aged three through five years. Demonstrates the scale to be valid and reliable with these age groups. (HOD)

Investigates the reading development of six preschool children who learned to read at home without systematic instruction. Attempts (1) to find out whether there was an identifiable process by which these children learned to read and (2) to study th role of the parents in these children's early reading acquisition. (HOD)

Discusses factors that foster the development of young voluntary readers. Reviews studies that describe home and school characteristics that encourage voluntary reading and stresses the importance of providing young students with a rich literary environment in the classroom. (FL)

Concludes that sound awareness scores significantly predicated performance of kindergarten children on a sight-word learning task and a decoding-like task. Subjects' knowledge of terminology was unrelated to success on either task. (FL)