Manipulative objects have long been an essential tool in the development of mathematics knowledge and skills. A growing body of evidence suggests using manipulative letters for decoding practice is an also an effective method for teaching reading, particularly in improving the phonological and decoding skills of students at risk for reading…

"Leveled Literacy Intervention" ("LLI") is a short-term, supplementary, small-group literacy intervention designed to help struggling readers achieve grade-level competency. The intervention provides explicit instruction in phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, reading comprehension, oral language skills, and…

This Italian alphabet book designed for kindergarten and first grade students presents each letter in upper and lower case form accompanied by an illustration and a single sentence caption. The sentence contains two or more words that begin with the letter in question. The book has a teacher's introduction and is illustrated by pen-and-ink…

Intended to help children learn phonics and to learn how to use phonics, this handbook is modeled on the 15th century hornbook. The handbook is divided into three parts: (1) "What Went Wrong?"; (2) "HOW to Teach Someone to Read by Beginning with Basic Phonics"; and (3) "Special Problems." Nineteen references and a…

This Spanish language workbook is intended to help elementary school children learn the Spanish alphabet. Each page presents a letter of the alphabet, a number of Spanish words beginning with that letter, and pen and ink drawings illustrating some of the words. The drawings are suitable for coloring. (AMH)

This paper provides a rationale which rejects misinformation, assumptions, and biases as bases for decision making on the use of i.t.a. in teaching reading and writing to primary school children. A discussion is provided which questions the reality of professionalism in teacher-administrator populations as well as the reality of a concern for the…

Discusses the positive effects that can be gained from using the initial teaching alphabet in beginning reading instruction. (RB)

A reading instructor interested in reliving the experience of learning to read for the first time attempted to read "Androcles and the Lion" in Shavian Alphabet. The would-be reader of Shavian faces a page of hooks and slants completely unfamiliar, but there is no translation problem. As soon as the reader can pronounce out loud the…

Reviews the research on the initial teaching alphabet (i/t/a), the sources of conflict and misunderstanding involving its use, and its future in reading instruction. (FL)

A brief glance at traditional orthographies and the initial teaching alphabet points up the need for spelling reform. (RB)

The manual alphabet was used as an adjunct to a linguistic reading system to achieve the following goals with primary grade learning disabled children: (1) ensure attention, (2) reinforce the learning of phonemes, (3) guide the student if he had difficulties, (4) introduce prefixes and suffixes, and (5) provide the child with an independent…

Investigates letter discrimination training and its transfer to a trigram recognition task. (RB)

Teachers, principals, and other administrators who are considering the adoption of i.t.a. for language arts in the primary grades need objective information about its advantages and its disadvantages. The purpose of this paper is to provide a list of the disadvantages which may be inherent in the adoption of i.t.a. The disadvantages of i.t.a. may…

Forty-eight kindergarten children were assigned to phoneme identity, phoneme manipulation, or language experience programs. Children in the manipulation program made greater gains in blending and segmentation, but children in the phoneme identity condition made greater gains on a test of phonetic cue reading. Implications for reading instruction…

Notes that a major goal within the language arts block is learning to recognize and write the letters of the alphabet. Presents 4 reasons that have been suggested as to why early letter knowledge exerts such a strong influence over learning to read and write. Presents descriptions of 12 websites dealing with the alphabet. (SG)