Reports on an enquiry into the responses of a class of Year 1 children, aged 5-6 years, to the first eight months of the National Literacy Strategy (NLS). Notes that the methodology enabled these young children to articulate detailed responses to their experience of a particular style of teaching. (SG)

This article focuses on practical classroom ideas for enhancing early literacy learning by teaching a broad range of metalinguistic skills. These skills include phonemic and word awareness, but focus largely on syntactic and pragmatic skills in order to give children a richer understanding of language and its functions. Theoretical background is…

Everything a persons needs to know in life is learned in Kindergarten is a popular adage among teachers. In this article, the author relates how everything she needed to know about teaching she learned from her own children. She relates that from the moment of their birth, she had determined that her four children would learn to read before they…

Teaching ability, over and above reading programs, is the major contributor to students' literacy success. Culturally and linguistically diverse students are not receiving "a free and appropriate education" when teachers are not implementing instructional strategies that optimize student achievement or positively reinforcing their cultural…

Identifies cognitive characteristics and learning style preferences of gifted readers, and presents instructional guidelines for accommodating those preferences. (HTH)

Argues that there is more to background experience than general knowledge--that concepts of print, language, story structue, and of reading's usefulness are equally important in developing early reading skills. (FL)

In response to criticism of a previous study, this paper reports a revision of a proposed phonics rule "when there are two vowels, one of which is a final e, the first vowel is long and the final e is silent" (cradle), which is called the VCE (Vowel Consonant E) rule. Following an introductory section, the paper examines previous research, citing…

Evaluates some of the 100 different teaching approaches to beginning reading and reading theory. (Author/RB)

Using a pretest-posttest comparison-group design, this 16-week study investigated the effects of 2 instructional approaches on the phonological awareness, alphabetic knowledge, and early reading of kindergarten children. The primary goal was to compare a form of contextualized instruction based on an adapted interactive writing program with a…

Learning to read becomes a difficult task for many children, particularly if they have not been reared in early childhood settings where literacy-based activities, interactions, or materials are prevalent. This study examined the impact that providing a college-level course in research-based instructional strategies for literacy development to…

Teachers can help parents foster emerging literacy skills in their preschool children in a way that is developmentally appropriate and fun: by collaborating to develop their child's lifelong love of reading and writing. Incorporating selected teacher-tested activities from the popular book "More Than Letters," this accessible guide…

"Phonological Awareness Training plus Letter Knowledge Training" is a general practice aimed at enhancing young children's phonological awareness, print awareness, and early reading abilities. Phonological awareness, the ability to detect or manipulate the sounds in words independent of meaning, is a precursor to reading. Phonological…

The purpose of this manual is to show teachers a variety of creative ways to capitalize on the high interest value of photographs for communication skills. The first section of this volume contains sketches to motivate deeper study of photojournalism: "Development of Photojournalism,""Time to Remember: Matthew B. Brady,""Dates in the History of…