These seven projects comprise the reading and language arts section of a report on Elementary Secondary Education Act Title IV programs for the state of Illinois. Complete descriptions are furnished for the following: a multi-text, individualized reading skills program for grades four through eight; a reading program which stresses phonetic and…

The theme of this conference defined reading as the process of creating meaning for all sensed stimuli; reading is a broad form of behavior, not limited to interacting with the written forms of human language. With this definition as a foundation, the articles in this bicentennial report develop a phrase taken from one of Thomas Jefferson's…

This curriculum guide suggests activities for teaching basic reading skills to elementary school students. The activities are grouped according to six major skill areas: reading readiness, word recognition, word analysis, word meaning, content reading, and reading comprehension. Within each group, the activities are listed according to the grade…

Increased public concern about students' basic skill levels and about the need for minimum-competency tests has placed part of the responsibility for reading-skills development on content-area teachers. This annotated bibliography is a resource guide for content-area teachers who want to integrate reading-skills instruction with their subject…

This master list describes the competencies that a bilingual education teacher should demonstrate in order to teach reading and language arts in Spanish. These competencies are divided into 12 areas: (1) commitment to the philosophy and principles of bilingual-bicultural education, of which Spanish reading and language arts are a necessary…

A battery of reading tests designed to identify the component skills involved in reading comprehension was administered to 624 sixth grade students in the metropolitan Sydney (Australia) schools. Factor analysis of the data showed that knowledge of word meanings, sentence comprehension, and semantic context are experimentally identifiable…

This paper, presented at a 1976 conference on the theory and practice of beginning reading instruction, introduces the theory that reading development occurs in stages patterned after Piaget's cognitive development stages. The stages include the prereading stage (until the age of six years); the decoding stage (first/second grade); the stage of…

The primary thesis of the "audread" model of language development is that children in a literate society first learn to think, then they learn to communicate and receive thoughts through oral language, and then they learn to communicate through written language (graphic representations). Four projects based on concepts from the audread…

Some basic pattern-analyzing functions that occur during the reading process are described in this paper. The functions deal mainly with the analysis of typographical factors such as word shape, spacing, and orientation, but they also interact with contextual variables. The research interpreted in the paper proposes an attentional model of reading…

The dependence of reading on speech is based on three assumptions: speech is the primary language system, acquired naturally without direct instruction; alphabetic writing systems are more or less phonetic representations of oral language; and speech appears to be an essential foundation for the acquisition of reading ability. By presupposing…

An exploration of specific deficits of learning disabled children, especially in the auditory system, is presented in this paper. Disorders of attention, perception, phonemic and visual discrimination, memory, and symbolization and conceptualization are considered. The paper develops several questions for teachers of learning disabled children to…

This paper discusses some specific issues about testing and relates the discussion to reading teachers and reading instruction. The issues that are discussed include the goals, criteria, and methods of classroom assessment. The paper concludes that teachers need to learn more about the process of assessment in order to use tests effectively, and…

A major problem that continues to plague United States education is the fact that large numbers of disadvantaged black students are not learning to read well enough to function in society. This paper discusses three reasons for the problem of teaching reading to these students. First, there exist no comprehensive developmental reading theories, no…

Kindergarten teachers should be concerned with the development of the child physically, psychologically, and socially. The development of readiness for reading should be part of the child's day-by-day activities in the kindergarten. Structured prereading activities should be conducted in informal, game-like ways. They should involve the active…

Reading programs in community colleges of Florida are described, based on the responses of 52 community college reading instructors (63% return) to a guestionnaire and a "Job Activities Rating Scale." Information is provided on the educational background of the instructors, with emphasis on specific training in the teaching of reading; the…