A former eighth grade reading and writing teacher considers how her experience in a classroom workshop for readers and writers has affected her behavior with her young daughter. Emphasizes providing children with adequate time to read, choice of what to read, and opportunities to respond. (RAE)

Examined preschoolers' experiences with their mothers and during group reading in preschool. Concludes that the patterns of adults' and preschoolers' talk about books support a model of a home-school relationship in which mothers provide an introduction to book reading that teachers expand by engaging children in cognitively challenging…

Describes two action research ethnographic studies that show different sides of a community-centered model of literacy among young children. One examined the storytelling and story reading practices low-income African American parents used with their young children. The other involved encouraging community participation by having parents share…

Describes a course that linked first-grade students using emergent writing skills with university early-childhood majors studying the process of emergent literacy, and, in so doing provided an authentic and meaningful learning context for both groups. Suggests that the pen-pal project demonstrates the value of interactive writing exchanges.…

Researchers and educators acknowledge that early reading instruction is of critical importance, with interventions and remedial programming most effective in the primary grades. Integral to this programming are educators' abilities to assess students' reading strengths and needs, with inconsistent and/or inaccurate practices ultimately threatening…

Early literacy experiences play an important role in later literacy skills and school achievement. Communities offer early literacy experiences in a variety of venues to meet the diverse needs of families. The author of this article provides four vignettes illustrating community-based early literacy activities: (1) private group classes such as…

This paper reports on a study of primary-grade students (N=79) and their parents in an attempt to identify opportunities for enhancing the collaborative interaction between home and school when designing quality learning environments. In particular, the study looked at the children's print concept development, reading attitudes, and family…

Dealing with the critical years from birth through kindergarten, this micromonograph answers parents' questions about when and how to prepare a child for reading. The pamphlet discusses in depth these suggestions: (1) talking and reading to the child, (2) letting the child read and write, (3) being a model of reading and writing behavior, and (4)…

A questionnaire on reading was administered to every student in the St. Joseph, Missouri, "Rainbow" program for gifted and talented readers. The same questionnaire was administered to a cross sectional sample of fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students in regular classrooms in the same district. Among other things, results showed that (1) 75% of…

FOUR APPROACHES TO BEGINNING READING WERE EVALUATED IN A 3-YEAR STUDY OF ELEMENTARY PUBLIC SCHOOL STUDENTS IN NEW CASTLE, PENNSYLVANIA. THE FOUR APPROACHES USED WERE (1) A BASAL READER PROGRAM PUBLISHED BY SCOTT, FORESMAN AND CO. (1962), (2) A PHONIC PROGRAM UTILIZING CORRELATED FILMSTRIPS PUBLISHED BY J.B. LIPPINCOTT CO. (1963), (3) A COMBINATION…

This booklet contains abstracts of papers presented at the 1974 conference of the Keystone State (Pennsylvania) Reading Association--the theme of the meeting was "humanism in reading." Abstracts are grouped according to the following "strands," or topics: early childhood, literacy and multilingual/multicultural education,…

Three reading procedures for learning isolated words--whole-word, syllable-blending, and phonics-blending--were examined to determine which was the most effective for preschool children. The six preschool children in the study were divided into two groups to assess the effects of the length and number of different letters in a series of training…

So far bilingual education has had only the most modest success in providing for children of limited English-speaking ability (LESAS) an educational opportunity equal to that of English-speaking children. In fact, to aim only at equality is self-defeating because it is impossible for a LESA child with a five-to-six year handicap ever to catch up…

In this collection, papers with similar topics are grouped together. Topics include: remedial reading teachers, primary assessment, preprimary reading, reading comprehension, reading in the content areas, integrating reading with subject matter, teaching reading through the materials of social studies, assessment of attitude toward reading, human…

The symposium theme of "Today's Child and Learning to Read" provides the focal point for the 12 papers included in this volume. Each is concerned with an individual area of reading and the relevance of that area to the needs of today's students. Nearly half the articles deal with specific current approaches to reading instruction and their…