Unproven beliefs about the process of reading and its instruction and about the effects of maturation and social structure on learning have obscured the question of what children know about how to read. An alternate conceptualization proposes that to learn to read children must obtain experience in three reading contexts: the use of print and its…

To gain additional information about how young children actually develop and use literacy before entering school, four young children were studied indepth by means of family questionnaires, reading age tests, diagnostic subskill tests, and miscue analysis. Five months later, the children were again tested to see if reading age had increased and if…

Twenty-one questions parents may ask about kindergarten are answered in this booklet. Generally, the content aims to clarify the purpose and scope of kindergarten. Several questions have to do with entering a child in kindergarten: the required age, necessary information, attendance regulations, length of school day and screening tests. Questions…

Jean Piaget's theory seems to lend support to reading specialists who believe that concrete operational thought constitutes a necessary and sufficient condition for learning to read. Preoperational children cannot deal with the complex relationships inherent in reading because they are tied perceptually to the immediate situation or…

Directed to parents of preschool children, this booklet suggests that well-prepared children seldom fail to learn to read and recommends that parents prepare their children for reading by providing one-to-one learning situations. The book is divided into sections that describe learning experiences at home when parents read themselves and offer…

As part of a series of publications reporting the promising practices gleaned from pre-elementary Right to Read Read programs, this manual is designed as an easy reference source through which parents can help their young children develop the skills necessary to read. While the manual is designed for use by parents, the activities discussed can…

Parents and teachers are encouraged in this paper to provide home and school cognitive science activities to help their preschool-age children develop prereading skills. Many of the activities mentioned could be introduced prior to the age of 3 years and all by the age of 5 years. In general, activities that develop cognitive skills should precede…

FOUR STUDIES CONDUCTED BY THE MOUNT VERNON PUBLIC SCHOOLS OVER A PERIOD OF FIVE SEMESTERS INVOLVED MACHINE-TEACHING READING TO 240 DISADVANTAGED PREKINDERGARTEN CHILDREN FROM THE CHILDREN'S CENTER AND THE CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTER TO PREPARE THEM FOR MORE SUCCESSFUL KINDERGARTEN LEARNING THROUGH ACADEMICALLY-ORIENTED READINESS ACTIVITIES IN AN…

Defining prereading skills, discussing their discovery, and determining their value in reading readiness are the primary concerns of this paper. Prereading skills are defined by logical analysis of the reading task and by instructional conventions. From an analysis of initial reading tasks, prerequisite skills are identified. Those skills which…

This paper details the development of two commercial programs for the instruction of language skills. The first, a reading program for the first two months of first grade, is designed to move children from speaking to reading without experiencing failure. In teaching prereading phonics skills (letter recognition, letter writing, awareness of…

This program, included in "Effective Reading Programs...," was begun in 1969 and involves all the district's 5,867 students in grades 1-5 in one or more of the program's components. The following five programs to help individualize elementary school reading instruction have been instituted: a comprehensive reading program, an early…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the predictive relationships which exist between eight selected prereading measures and three criterion measures of reading achievement at the end of grade one in each of six different approaches to beginning reading instruction. Two randomly selected samples of boys and girls were the subjects. The…

"Sesame Street" has sought to provide a supplementary educational experience on television to help prepare children for school by stimulating their appetite for learning. Its specific goals include instruction in 1) symbolic representation--letters, numbers, and geometric forms; 2) cognitive processes--perceptual discrimination,…

Two experiments investigated the effects of pictures as first-sound or action mnemonics for learning letter-sound pairs by prereading kindergarten children. In both experiments, the mnemonics had a substantial effect during training, but this effect disappeared on a transfer test with the mnemonics removed. (Author/CP)

Illustrates ways teachers can facilitate literacy and language development in preschool and kindergarten children by offering children a variety of opportunities to create connections between "reading" symbols, communicating ideas and mastering meaning. Among the suggested activities are oral language experience, printing of names and words, and…