Background: Phonological awareness is known to be an excellent predictor of later reading acquisition. It remains unclear, however, whether phoneme manipulation alone best explains this association or whether an additional direct contribution of onset-rime awareness is predictive. This issue is explored here. Method: A longitudinal study is…

High/Scope's approach to education is a blend of Jean Piaget's constructivist theory of child development and the best of traditional teacher experience. The High/Scope approach is about helping students gain knowledge and skills in important content areas, such as language and literacy, initiative and social relations, movement, music, and…

Using an ecological model, this study explored the effects of distal and proximal sources of influence on students' learning. We first examined three markers of teacher qualification--elementary education credential, years of education, and years of experience--on observed classroom practices across three dimensions--warmth/responsivity,…

The 2009 Worldwide Education and Training Workshop brought together over 375 members of the international development community to share best practices in addressing the growing challenges in the field of education for social and economic development. This paper presents synopses of the presentations delivered during the workshop.

Background: Recent government papers have expressed concern about the poor educational attainment of "looked after" children. Early reading development has been found to be significant in their subsequent academic achievement. The possibility that biosocial factors extraneous to their experiences in public care may underpin their low…

Taking into account what research says about getting all children off to a better start in becoming literate, this booklet discusses recent "cutting-edge" research in the area of reading and spelling acquisition, focusing on the practical implications. The first part of the booklet notes what happens in the homes of early readers,…

Given preschool children's characteristically short attention spans and unpredictable interests, teachers can encourage early reading most effectively and appropriately through the systemization of informal or incidental, rather than formal, learning. They can make learning to read relevant to traditional preschool activities in a number of ways.…

This study was designed to investigate the effects of the use of language experience and whole language activities in an early literacy kindergarten curriculum. The study attempts to show that participation in a language-enriched environment achieves results similar to those of traditional methods and basal reading programs in regard to the…

Useful for teachers and parents of children who are developmentally ready for a beginning reading program, this guide is intended to help plan activities differentiated according to children's readiness for reading and individualized according to their strengths and needs. The guide is also helpful for young children who are either early readers…

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 68 first graders to identify what ideas young readers hold about the reading process. Specifically, the study questioned whether good and poor readers held the same views about how they learned to read, what they and others did as they read, their reading ability, and why people read. The responses of…

With practical applications for parents and teachers, this book uses diary entries, tape recordings, and videotapes made by the child's mother from a researcher's perspective to chronicle a child's reading and writing development from birth to age three. The introduction provides an overview of how children learn to talk, read, and write;…

A study was conducted to determine the attitudes and preferences of 38 intellectually gifted intermediate grade students toward their recreational reading habits. The students' parents also were surveyed to describe the children's reading readiness development. The results showed that the students preferred books over other materials, liked…

This discussion of methods, experiences, and theory provides educators and parents with an approach to learning to read that emphasizes learning to think and becoming a functional reader who can enjoy using this skill throughout life. Included are simple, inexpensive suggestions for improving reading, such as more attention to regular school…

Three psycho-social variables, identified as modeling influences of children's fathers, children's sex-typing of reading, and their judgmental conformity were investigated as possible correlates of reading achievement in grades one, two, and three. The subjects were 226 children from the first, second and third grades, all of whom came from…

Reading requires the synthesis of auditory and visual skills and therefore involves almost all of the brain. Stages of reading include prereading skills (requiring an adequate spoken vocabulary), the ability to name letters and pictures, good memory for spoken sentences, and manual dexterity in copying patterns. Learning to read involves the…