In this study, the student texts and teacher guides of two reading intervention programs for at-risk, first-grade students were analyzed and compared: Fountas and Pinnell's "Leveled Literacy Intervention" (LLI) and Scott Foresman's "My Sidewalks" (MS). The analyses drew on the framework of available theory and…

Presents a study where 12 poor readers of first grade were randomly assigned to one of two daily tutoring conditions designed to teach children to read regularly spelled short words by either blending sounds to form words, or cumulative introduction of whole words. Finds no initial difference, but finds different results in delayed posttest one…

Reviews recent investigations that analyze the word-recognition responses of children taught by different methods and reanalyzes the results of W. Wiley's 1928 naturalistic experiment in order to deduce the nature of the process underlying the learning of words. (Author/CS)

Reports on an investigation of the effects of teaching first grade children two sets of six words by phonics and sight word methods in three instructional conditions with either a selection or production response. (MKM)

The purposes of this study were to determine (1) if it is possible to predict which children will develop word recognition deficits based on levels of articulation proficiency and auditory discrimination ability; (2) the effect of two different instructional approaches for beginning reading, phonics, and whole-word approach; and (3) if first grade…

This study compared the effectiveness of reading instruction at the onset-rime level, phoneme level, and whole word level with 48 first graders. Both phoneme and onset-rime groups were significantly more accurate than whole word groups, and there was a tendency for the onset-rime group to outperform all other groups. (Author/DB)

Ten auditory and ten visual aptitude measures were administered in the middle of first grade to a sample of 58 low readers. More than half of this low reader sample had scored more than a year below expected grade level on two or more aptitudes. Word recognition measures were administered after four months of sight word instruction and again after…

To determine whether learning words can be accomplished effectively using the computer, 11 first grade children in an experimental group were taught specific sight words on the Apple computer as compared to the teaching of those same words to 11 children in the classroom using flashcards. A total of 25 words was taught over a five-week period. The…

This study compared 5 groups (45 each) of disadvantaged first grade children learning to read 16 basic sight vocabulary words. The subjects were enrolled in 1 of 16 classrooms on three campuses of a school district in Texas located on the southern border between the United States and Mexico. Furthermore, all spoke Spanish as their first language.…

A study of the effects of pictures and context cues in teaching sight word vocabulary used six high ability and six low ability first grade students for each of four experimental conditions: word alone, picture, sentence with no picture (context), and sentence plus picture. The procedures included acquisition and test trials, a retention test…

Twenty first grade children were videotaped during their first six weeks of learning to read in a study of the modified synthetic phonics program and the four progressive stages of oral reading behavior (emergence, contextual, nonresponse, and postresponse). The approach used by the teacher emphasized learning new words through the concurrent…

A naturalistic study of two bilingual first grade classrooms was conducted to gain an increased understanding of the cultural literacy instruction beliefs in society and to better understand the process by which literacy instruction beliefs influence the classroom. One Anglo and one Hispanic teacher working in different midwestern school systems…