The SPOKES (Supporting Parents on Kids Education in Schools) programme is a ten-week intervention for parents designed to help struggling readers in Year 1. The programme teaches parents strategies to support their children's reading such as listening to children read, pausing to let them work out words, and praising them when they concentrate and…

This study examined parents' goals for reading ABC books with their children and their perceptions of page features. Factor analysis of a questionnaire answered by 225 parents of junior and senior kindergarten students revealed four goals for reading alphabet books. In order of importance as rated by parents the goals were: Learning to Read,…

Targeted to children as young as 3 months old, there is a growing number of baby media products that claim to teach babies to read. This randomized controlled trial was designed to examine this claim by investigating the effects of a best-selling baby media product on reading development. One hundred and seventeen infants, ages 9 to 18 months,…

We examined the applicability of the Home Literacy Model in an orthographically transparent language (Greek). Seventy Greek children were followed from kindergarten until grade 4. In kindergarten they were tested in non-verbal intelligence, vocabulary, phonological sensitivity, rapid naming, and letter knowledge. The parents of the children also…

A questionnaire was constructed and evaluated by specialists in the field of reading instruction to gain information regarding the use of the Initial Teaching Alphabet (i/t/a). Elementary teachers and reading specialists in 16 randomly sampled school districts in nine states were questioned. Eight of the systems were in districts generally…

Presents the results of a questionnaire sent to teachers using the initial teaching alphabet (i.t.a.), and their principals. Generally favorable effects were reported by both groups, with the great majority of teachers indicating they would choose to continue using i.t.a. (DLG)