The following is a combination of quotes and summary from an article 
published 
in _American Teacher_, November 1995, entitled "Early Intervention Key to 
Reading Success".
"Research shows that by the middle of first grade, the serious effects of 
having not caught on to reading become evident.  Thanks to programs like the 
AFT's ER&D [Educational Research and Development -CB] project, which 
translates 
educational research into everyday classroom practice, young children who are 
having reading problems can be given some special help."
"Most early reading difficulties are rooted in an inefficient word 
recognition 
process.  Phonemic awareness and an understanding of the alphabetic principle 
are crucial (and teachable) factors that underlie the development of word 
recognition skills."
Some of the things teachers may do to strengthen word-recogniton skills, as 
proposed in the article, include 1)teaching children to rhyme [discuss 
rhyming 
words and why they rhyme - use poems and nursery rhymes], 2)oddity tasks 
[picking words that *don't* rhyme from a list], 3)syllable splitting 
[pronouncing the "in" from the word "pin", to learn that words are made up of 
parts), 4)phoneme manipulation [moving the parts of words around using a 
device 
such as a sound board], and 5)strengthening the child's knowledge of the 
alphabet.
The reading-writing connection is also seen as a vital component of learning 
to 
read..."When children create spellings based on their knowledge of the sound 
system of their language, it helps them work out the alphabetic principle."
Chuck Beams
Fidonet - 1:2608/70
cbeams@future.dreamscape.com
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* UniQWK #5290* Anything not nailed down is a cat toy.
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