This study investigated whether summer vacation accounts for more of the reading achievement gap between minority and non-minority children than does the school year. To test for the summer effect, the reading subtests of the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills were administered to approximately 1,200 fifth-grade children in 15 public schools in…

This study describes certain characteristics of early readers, with emphasis on their accomplishments on eight Piagetian tasks. The early readers were defined as those children who were between four and six years old, who could read at the pre-primer level or higher, and who had not attended elementary school. The population of the study consisted…

This issue of the yearbook contains twenty papers that were presented and discussed at the eighth annual meeting of the National Reading Conference. Papers in part one relate to the various problems involved in starting college reading programs, including the administration of the program, selection and motivation of students, objectives,…

An instrument measuring the attitude of young children (kindergarten through grade two) toward reading was constructed, using photographs, ambiguous as to detail, with each representing a different reading situation. Subjects, 166 white middle-class children, were directed to view each picture and indicate whether they liked, disliked, or were…

This paper contains a critical evaluation of the research conducted by O.L. Davis and Carl Personke on the use of reading readiness tests in English and Spanish for Spanish speaking elementary school pupils. Davis and Personke indicated that, when Spanish speaking first graders were tested in both English and Spanish, most of the differences were…

Special equipment was used to record the eye movement patterns of 60 children enrolled in a reading clinic. There were 20 children in each of three groups: good readers, slow readers, and non-readers. The children were shown printed material on a screen accompanied by action sequences and voice recordings similar to what they might see on…

This study reports the results of a year long investigation conducted by the Research and Development Center of Roosevelt University, College of Education. The study was designed as an inquiry into the first year of a school system's attempt to implement a program of continuous progress for inner-city elementary school students in the city of…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the comparative efficiency of three summer programs in helping junior high school boys increase their reading ability. The study compared the alternatives of methods typically used in remedial reading programs, a content area program, and one which simply provided personal reinforcement. Each sample…

This study was conducted to determine if dependency as manifested by the preschool child is predictive of reading disability. Case studies were conducted using seventeen disabled readers, nine boys and eight girls, of average or above average ability from the third grade in two schools on Long Island. Preschool dependency was determined by a…

This bulletin is a digest and interpretation of some of the main findings reported in Chapter V, "Nature and Extent of Current Practices in Educating Those Who Teach Reading," by J. Richard Harsh in "The Information Base for Reading: A Critical Review of the Information Base for Current Assumptions Regarding the Status of Instruction and…

This study determined the effectiveness of the Initial Teaching Alphabet and Traditional Orthography on first and second grade pupils of normal and superior intelligence. The experimental i.t.a. group contained 44 first graders and 37 second graders, and the control traditional orthography groups had 43 first graders and 48 second graders.…

A four-week course in reading comprehension which attempts to provide students with a repertoire of techniques to use when they encounter difficult reading passages is described in this paper. At the end of the course, students must demonstrate their ability to skim a short reading passage and write a one-sentence summary of its central theme and…

The purposes of this research project are (1) to test a theory which purports to identify the predictive antecedents (i.e., precursors) of developmental dyslexia (specific reading disability) several years before the disorder is clinically evident, and (2) to evaluate the mechanism which is postulated to underlie and influence later developmental…

Twenty children in each of grades 2 and 4 were given a reaction time task of the type in which Sternberg (1969) shows high-speed, serial, exhaustive scanning of information in memory. On each trial subjects were asked to memorize two, four, or six pictures and were then presented with a single picture probe. The subject made a key-pressing…

An ESEA/Title III program designed to expand services to remedial readers through the use of paraprofessional personnel is described. The greater part of the report explains the need for such a program, selection and training of paraprofessionals, materials, project implementation, parental involvement, and inservice training of the professional…