This article examines the debates around the teaching of early reading and explores the possible consequences of policy recommendations for teachers' knowledge and understanding of effective pedagogic practices. These include teachers' abilities to adapt patterns of talk (pedagogic discourses) to respond to individual needs and the aims of…

We investigated the effect of a morphological awareness intervention on the morphological awareness and reading skills of a 6-year-old student who was struggling with early reading skills and had a history of speech and language impairment. We conducted a 7-week intervention designed to increase the student's awareness of affixes and the meaning…

Examines the metacognitive reading strategies of five children, four to six years of age, who were reading fluently prior to grade one. States that fluency was judged on whether the children could conduct meaningful reading with relative smoothness. Suggests that each of the children used a variety of metacognitive reading strategies and showed…

States that children with hyperlexia who learn to read spontaneously before age five are impaired in reading and listening comprehension but have word recognition skills well above their measured cognitive and linguistic abilities. Administers phonemic awareness measures to three early readers. Finds that all three children's phonemic awareness…

Calls for reforms in instructional practices and curricula control in literacy programs that disenfranchise five- and six-year-olds who have already served for months or years as active members of the literacy club. Illustrated by one child's early literacy and kindergarten experiences. (BB)

This case study documents the emergence of reading ability in an extremely precocious reader between the ages of two years, seven months and three years, two months. At the end of this period, his word recognition ability was at the late first-grade level. Writing skills began to develop when he was four years old. (DB)

Continues the chronicle of the development of a young reader. Details his growth in reading and interests in his third year. (FL)

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…