Describes the following teaching ideas: note writing; books supplementing a unit on measuring; parents' activities calendars; quick phonics inventory; map reading; language experience chart stories; predicting activities with titles; summer mail for learning disabled students; role playing; teaching guides for novels; sentence transformation; and…

Two combined second and third grade classrooms were observed throughout the five weeks of a summer school program to determine what "reading instruction" was in the contextual reality of classroom life. Observers viewed approximately 20 hours of reading instruction per week. In addition, they interviewed the classroom teachers informally as the…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 12 titles deal with the following topics: (1) influences on beliefs about reading and learning to read and instructional behavior of student teachers, (2) teachers' decisions about basal reading lessons, (3) a study of effective…

Addressing subjects ranging from reading readiness to phonics, this book examines several fundamental elements of beginning reading instruction. Divided into 12 chapters, the book begins with a chapter providing a general overview of reading instruction, including the debate between the perception of reading as decoding or comprehension, and other…

To examine how classroom conditions such as students' mean aptitude, materials used, and instructional time influence the amount of reading material covered, 12 first grade classrooms were each observed for 12 days over a 36-week period. Students' reading readiness and word recognition skills were tested prior to observation while group mean…

Focuses on the problems and conflicts experienced by a teacher intern who was attempting to implement a developmentally appropriate discovery curriculum into a direct-instruction primary grade classroom. (BB)

To examine literacy instruction in light of recent research and practice, this journal issue presents five articles focusing on the creation of a literate society where people appreciate literature and can use reading and writing to enrich their lives. The first article, "Literacy Instruction: An Alternative" (A. S. Bayer), presents an…

This 47-item annotated bibliography is composed of materials for teaching native Spanish speakers both language arts and content area material at the secondary and elementary levels. For each of the entries, the following information is indicated: target language, educational level, material type, content area, title, date of publication,…

Examined six aspects of vocabulary instruction given to fourth and sixth graders prior to reading in two basal reading series. Found that words targeted for instruction were already known; instruction in the two series differed markedly; much of the instruction was not sufficient to improve comprehension; and instruction was not necessarily suited…

The relationship between type of reading instruction (whole language or basal) and reading comprehension as measured by the California Achievement Test (CAT) was investigated. Nineteen third- and fourth-grade teachers from school 5 districts in North Carolina took part in the project with 215 students in the basal group and 200 students in the…

Originally developed for the Department of Defense Schools (DoDDS) system, this learning package on extending the basal is designed for teachers who wish to upgrade or expand their teaching skills on their own. The package includes a comprehensive search of the ERIC database; a lecture giving an overview on the topic; the full text of several…

Although the relationship between reading and writing proficiency has interested scholars for two centuries, the exact nature of this relationship has resisted discovery. The persistance of statistically significant correlations across a broad range of subjects, measures, and experimental settings leaves no doubt that a moderate link between…

A study examined whether reading aloud to kindergarten children on a regular basis would have an effect on their attention span. Subjects, 28 kindergarten students from a New Jersey school, were pretested and then assigned either to an experimental group or to a control group (14 in each group). The experimental sample received the treatment of…

This guide, one in a series of works dealing with adult literacy education, is designed to help adult reading program staff to select adult literacy materials. Examined in the first section of the guide are the commercially prepared basal and supplemental reading materials that are available for use in the Jefferson County Adult Reading Program…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 29 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) magnet schools and achievement in reading and mathematics; (2) a psycholinguistic analysis of the oral reading behavior of selected urban students; (3) the…