West Virginia is a nationally recognized leader for its strong commitment to high-quality early learning education programming. West Virginia is one of a very small handful of states in the nation with free, full-day, five-day kindergarten for all children AND voluntary universal pre-k to all four-year-old children (and three-year-old children…

Vocational Education, Community Training, and Occupational Relations Program (VECTOR) serves a variety of students with disabilities, about one-third of whom are deaf, hard of hearing, or deaf/blind. As part of what the federal government calls a "traditionally underserved population," these students come from the homes of immigrants and…

Looking back on a course they had designed, the authors recognized that the catalyst to success was the commitment to incorporating five course components: (1) substantial instructional minutes; (2) authentic academic reading material; (3) various instructional groupings; (4) instruction on vocabulary; and (5) background knowledge, and modeling of…

Because of its continued commitment to and investment in high-quality early & elementary learning, West Virginia has established itself as a national leader in the area of early learning. This accolade is not uncommon for West Virginia's early learning system, as West Virginia has a history of leading the nation in early learning and with…

Storytimes, lap-sit programs, and other services for young children are a major part of most public libraries' missions. According to children's librarians, these services play a significant role in preparing children for success as readers. This article discusses the positive relationship between children's services and early reading success by…

This program, included in "Effective Reading Programs...," serves 485 white and Spanish-speaking students in K-6. In the program, begun in 1970, state-mandated basal reading series are supplemented by four locally developed programs: Levels Design Letter Readiness, Rebus Reading, Project Read, and Great Studies. The Levels Design Letter…

One of the twelve exemplary programs summarized in the Introduction to Right to Read's "Effective Reading Programs: Summaries of 222 Selected Programs" (CS001934), this program uses an organized phonics system to increase the reading readiness of one school's kindergarten children, many of whom have bilingual parents. In a careful…

An elementary school in Texas has developed a program of reading instruction that immediately provides early readers with ample reading opportunities and materials rather than constraining them with "reading readiness" assessment. Initially, the absence of sufficient reinforcement material in the basal readers required increased amounts of reading…

As part of a series of publications reporting the promising practices gleaned from pre-elementary Right to Read programs, this guidebook introduces its readers to the format used to describe the promising practices, provides statistical and descriptive information about the pre-elementary Right to Read programs, and describes each of the four…

This project report describes pilot programs of the Ames Community School District for two school years, 1973-74 and 1974-75. The purposes of the pilot programs were to ascertain whether objectives were met, to consider the appropriateness of activities and materials, to determine the validity of the test measure, to assess the degree to which…

Describes a preschool program that introduces four-year-olds to print concepts such as left to right, top to bottom, words beginning with the same sound, and upper and lower case letters. (AEA)

This program, included in "Effective Reading Programs...," began in 1969. Forty-five preschool-age children are receiving prereading and reading instruction, and parents of 100 other children are using the materials to teach their children at home. The New Approach Method is a series of 84 gamelike lessons, each of which is taped for a…

One of the twelve exemplary programs summarized in the Introduction to Right to Read's "Effective Reading Programs: Summaries of 222 Selected Programs" (CS001934), this program serves disadvantaged, inner-city preschool children who score at or below the twenty-fifth percentile on a preschool inventory. Children attend kindergarten for…

This document reports on the effects of an integenerational program which was conducted to involve senior citizen volunteers with preschool children in a university day care setting. The primary emphases of the project were to enhance the children's reading readiness and foster a mutually beneficial relationship between seniors and children.…

Project Solid Start was designed to test the hypothesis that a carefully structured, integrated, and intensive program reinforcing the regular first grade curriculum in all aspects of the language arts would significantly reduce the numbers of children experiencing delay, difficulty, and failure in the acquisition of reading and writing skills.…