This article addresses the characteristics of learners in the emergent stage of literacy development and describes two instructional practices that facilitate the development of the alphabetic principle and concept of word in text.

Preschool children often confuse letters with their mirror images when they try to read and write. Mirror confusion seems to occur more often in line with the direction of script (e.g., left-to-right for the Latin alphabetic script), suggesting that the processing of letter orientation and text directionality may be interrelated in preliterate…

This study examined the effects of a 10 week invented writing program with five-year-old preschoolers (mean age 5.7 years) on their immediate post intervention literacy skills and also the facilitative effects of the intervention on the subsequent learning to read during the first 6 months of schooling. The study included 105 children (54 girls)…

The difficulties children face as they are learning to read is the focus of this book, which is a collection of children's work (drawings and handwriting), with statements exploring their implications. The introduction discusses the relationship between early writing and early reading, individual differences, the question of age norms, questions…

Selecting from a wide variety of sources, this report presents instructional techniques for the remediation of letter reversal errors in young students' writing. The techniques in the report have been applied in classrooms and found to be successful with a great majority of students. Sections of the report include: (1) an introduction; (2)…

Discusses exercises enabling teachers to help 6-year-olds complete the path to total reading and spontaneous writing. The foundation of the exercises is to help children analyze words into sounds; relate the symbols of the alphabet with the sounds using sandpaper letters; and acquire the physical ability to reproduce the letters in writing. (TJQ)