This book offers suggestions to help parents make their children successful readers and learners. The first chapter, Getting Started, discusses setting an example, being a tutor, creating a positive environment, and letting children be the stars. The second chapter, The Reading Process: Building Meaning, discusses setting a purpose, stages of the…

This paper describes development of a bank of interventions in response to individual student needs identified by Student Study Teams (SSTs) in the Horry County (South Carolina) school district. It also describes the training of SST members in the selection, application, and monitoring of each intervention. Following a survey that identified basic…

This report summarizes the work and findings of the National Reading Panel, charged by Congress to assess the status of research-based knowledge, including the effectiveness of various approaches to teaching children to read. The introduction to the report discusses the charge to the panel by Congress, establishment of the panel, the panel's…

This report presents the reports of the subgroups of the National Reading Panel, charged by Congress to assess the status of research-based knowledge, including the effectiveness of various approaches to teaching children to read. Each of the chapters 2 through 6 contains its own executive summary and appendixes in addition to the report of the…

This approximately 20-minute video discusses the work and the findings of the National Reading Panel, charged by Congress to assess the status of research-based knowledge, including the effectiveness of various approaches to teaching children to read. The panel found that the most effective way to teach children to read is through systematic and…

Compares a structured phonics method with a child-centered language experience approach to teach beginning reading in kindergarten. Finds no difference in achievement between the two groups. Finds that children evidenced more motivation and social interaction related to language activities in the language experience approach. (KEH)

Investigates whether teachers behave in ways consistent with their theoretical orientation to reading during reading instruction. Finds that a majority of the teachers did not teach reading in a manner consistent with their self-reported theoretical orientation. (RS)

The progress of 138 elementary students with specific learning disabilities was followed as they were instructed using the Alphabetic Phonics curriculum. After 3 years, the curriculum produced significant progress in reading comprehension for average and above average students, though below average students did not advance substantially in…

Reports on a study of preferred reading instruction approaches among 121 British reading teachers. Finds that most do not use a single approach, but a blend of approaches determined by individual differences. Maintains that most perceive their role as encouraging students to enjoy reading. (CFR)

Reports a study that examined the usefulness of concept maps for detecting differences in kindergarten teachers' theoretical orientation (whole language versus phonics). Results revealed that content but not structure measures differentiated whole language from phonics teachers. Concept maps proved useful in measuring teachers' theoretical…

Various word-recognition tasks were completed by 54 second-grade students from classrooms where reading instruction followed the whole-language approach or the phonics/skill-based approach. A task involving a cloze procedure favored the whole-language approach, but there were no other significant differences between groups. Contains 30 references.…

Twenty children (grades 4 through 7) with reading disabilities participated in 16 one-hour individual tutorials over a one-month period with instruction for half the group including structural analysis and alphabet principle training without structural analysis. Children in both groups improved reliably and equally in reading and related measures.…

This article reports on research on the effectiveness of a peer-assisted learning strategy (PALS) intervention to develop fluency in beginning readers with and without disabilities. Pairs of students complete phonically based activities and then repeated readings of a shared text. Evaluation indicated that the peer-mediated, repeated reading…

After rating their own literacy-related knowledge in three areas (knowledge about reading/reading development, phonemic awareness/phonics, and morpheme awareness/structural analysis), graduate teacher-education students completed five tasks intended to measure their actual disciplinary knowledge in these areas. Teachers with high levels of prior…