In this article, the author presents a teaching prompt--Write-it-Out--to instruct readers who seemingly guess at words with no or limited use of grapheme-phonemic correspondences to recontextualize word-solving into writing. Through the nature of this prompt, slowing down the pace of solving words on the run with writing also reciprocally builds…

A hallmark of skilled reading is recognizing written words automatically from memory by sight. How beginning readers attain this skill is explained. They must acquire foundational knowledge, including phonemic segmentation, grapheme-phoneme knowledge, decoding, and spelling skills. When these skills are applied, spellings of words become bonded to…

The purpose of this article is to rethink how sight words are categorized in early childhood classrooms. Three categories of words (regularly spelled, temporarily irregularly spelled, and permanently irregularly spelled) are presented as a way to think about the orthographic representations of words and how these representations interact with…

In five phonic generalizations, this article introduces a logical system of letter-sound relationships. Ranging from 91% to 99% phonic transparency, these statements generalize a study of 16,928 words in children's literature. The r-controlled vowels aside, the analysis shows 54 basic transparent letters and letter combinations, 39 transparent…

Shared Reading is a powerful teaching technique for teaching beginning reading. Technologies such as Interactive Whiteboards now make Shared Reading much easier to do. Large texts are projected on the whiteboard for Choral reading, and interactive features allow students to learn about letter-sound correspondences, spelling patterns, punctuation,…

To achieve academically, young children need a strong foundation in literacy. Alphabet knowledge is one aspect of early literacy. This article presents the importance of and the components of alphabet knowledge. An exploratory study in which prekindergarten and kindergarten teachers read aloud three different alphabet books to their students in a…

Discusses some of the reasons why basal readers confuse two long u sounds. (RB)

Concludes that children in grades two through six can learn sound-symbol relationships even though they cannot define phonics terms or give examples of them. (DD)

This article describes effective instructional strategies for teaching verbs with inflected endings. The ability to spell past and present progressive verbs provides an example of how children need to learn to integrate their developing understanding of letter-sound correspondences with knowledge of morphological and orthographic patterns in order…

Differences between spelling-to-sound and sound-to-spelling correspondences can cause problems in the teaching of reading and writing. (MKM)

Suggests that teaching words with a regular phonetic structure first will help children learn, and presents lists of words with regular phonetic structure and three procedures teachers can use in an instructural program. (JM)

Reviews research on the question of how to best teach letter-sound correspondences in beginning reading instruction. Describes a new, child-friendly, research-based way of teaching letter-sound correspondences to English- and Spanish-speaking children, which is not only explicit, systematic, and extensive, but also context embedded and meaningful.…

Examines basic properties of selected orthographies of various languages and suggests that they play a crucial role in transferring reading ability across languages, especially if the language systems are quite different. (FL)

This study, which extends Jeffrey and Samuels' study, indicates that children taught "sounds" learned more grapheme-phoneme correspondences and read more transfer words than did those taught "words." (HOD)

Describes letterbox lessons in which children learn the alphabetic code, spelling words by placing letters in boxes that show the number of phonemes in words, and later reading what they have spelled. Discusses materials, how to teach a letterbox lesson, and effectiveness of these lessons. (SR)