THE NATURE, FUNCTIONS, AND TRANSITIONAL STAGE OF THE INITIAL TEACHING ALPHABET (I.T.A.) IN BEGINNING READING IN THE UNITED STATES ARE DISCUSSED. THE MEDIUM, I.T.A., WAS ORIGINALLY CONCEIVED AS A TRANSITIONAL ALPHABET, OF WHICH SPELLING IS AN INTEGRAL PART. THE MEDIUM IS DESIGNED TO RATIONALIZE THE DECODING PROCESS AND AT THE SAME TIME PROVIDE A…

Phonics teaches learners how to match the letters of the alphabet to the speech sounds they already know. At age five, children who are ready to learn to read have a vocabulary of some 5,000 words and understand far more than that when they hear them. The problem is that there are 44 sounds in English and only 26 letters in the alphabet. Phonics…

The purpose of this project was to test the effectiveness of i.t.a. in teaching reading to first grade students in the Portland Public Schools. Some of the elements of the experimental design included the following: one experimental--i.t.a.--and one control--traditional orthography (TO)--class was formed in each of ten schools; teachers and…

AN EVALUATION OF THE I/T/A READING PROGRAM AT THE LAKEWOOD PUBLIC SCHOOLS CALLED FOR AN INVESTIGATION OF THE IMMEDIATE AND LONG TERM EFFECTS OF I/T/A INSTRUCTION IN READING AND VARIOUS AREAS OF LANGUAGE ARTS. AN EXPERIMENTAL GROUP OF 93 PUPILS WAS DIVIDED INTO TWO GROUPS, DEPENDING ON THE AMOUNT OF I/T/A INSTRUCTION GIVEN. ONE GROUP HAD 1 1/2…

A 2-YEAR LONGITUDINAL STUDY WAS CONDUCTED TO EVALUATE THE "EARLY-TO-READ I/T/A PROGRAM." THIRTY-FOUR PUPILS RAMDOMLY ASSIGNED TO ONE FIRST GRADE WERE TAUGHT USING THE "EARLY-TO-READ I/T/A SERIES," AND 26 PUPILS RANDOMLY ASSIGNED TO ANOTHER FIRST GRADE WERE TAUGHT USING THE "GINN BASIC READERS" AND TRADITIONAL…

This study compared the relative effectiveness of the Initial Teaching Alphabet (i. t. a.) program for teaching beginning reading with a matched program using traditional orthography (T. O.). Three waves of first grade students in ten predominately white elementary schools were randomly assigned to i. t. a. and T. O. classrooms. Summary evaluation…

In discussing instructional approaches to reading, this book offers several definitions of reading and discusses teaching techniques, including early methods, the basal approach, and recent trends, among them the phonics approach, the linguistics approach, the language experience approach, the initial teaching alphabet, individualized reading,…

This manual, designed to follow "Spanish Alphabet Book 1," presents a Spanish phonetic reading program for children beginning to learn how to read. It contains an alphabet chart with pictures which symbolize words using the sounds of the respective letters. Other pages are devoted completely to the sounds of the vowels, reinforced with common…

THE RESULTS OF THE CONTINUATION OF THE COOPERATIVE RESEARCH PROGRAM IN FIRST GRADE READING INSTRUCTION AT THE END OF SECOND GRADE ARE REPORTED. THE SECOND-GRADE PHASE WAS CONCERNED WITH (1) THE EXTENT TO WHICH READINESS SKILLS ARE RELATED TO READING ACHIEVEMENT AT THE END OF SECOND GRADE, (2) HOW THE VARIOUS METHODS OF INSTRUCTION COMPARE IN…

This manual, designed to follow "English Alphabet Book 1," presents an English phonetic reading program for children beginning to learn how to read. It contains an alphabet chart with pictures which symbolize words using the sounds of the respective letters. Other pages are devoted completely to the sounds of the vowels, reinforced with common…

This selective bibliography is one of nine documents compiled to provide titles and descriptions of useful and informative reading documents which were indexed into the ERIC system from 1966 to 1974. The 190 entries in this section of the bibliography concern methods in teaching reading and are arranged alphabetically by author in one of the…

Based on its use with first graders in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, for an eleven year period, the Initial Teaching Alphabet (i.t.a.) appears to have a number of advantages for reading instruction. These years of research have indicated that the advantages of i.t.a. are that it permits the child to: advance more rapidly in reading and writing…

This paper analyzes some of the conditions affecting the introduction of innovations in reading instruction in post-war Britain. The relationship between these innovations and research is explored. Section one presents background information and discusses possible causes for the influx of innovative techniques in reading instruction in the 1950s…

Selected recent research studies are reviewed under the following headings: (1) perception pretraining for reading, (2) hierarchical arrangement of reading skills, (3) comparisons of suggested sequences of different basal series, (4) code versus meaning emphasis in beginning reading, and (5) the relative effectiveness of methods involving…

FOUR APPROACHES TO BEGINNING READING WERE EVALUATED IN A 3-YEAR STUDY OF ELEMENTARY PUBLIC SCHOOL STUDENTS IN NEW CASTLE, PENNSYLVANIA. THE FOUR APPROACHES USED WERE (1) A BASAL READER PROGRAM PUBLISHED BY SCOTT, FORESMAN AND CO. (1962), (2) A PHONIC PROGRAM UTILIZING CORRELATED FILMSTRIPS PUBLISHED BY J.B. LIPPINCOTT CO. (1963), (3) A COMBINATION…