Studies of successful beginning readers have suggested two factors--a responsive communication environment and the awareness of reading as communication--that contribute to early success in reading. In light of this, a study was conducted to identify and differentiate high communication and low communication classrooms and to explore the relationship between classroom environment and children's perceptions of the reading process. An observer spent 15 minutes in each of 15 first grade classrooms gathering information about the environment through a 57-item checklist. Checklist scores were then used to rank the classrooms as high or low communication environments. Next, ten children from the highest and ten from the lowest scoring classrooms were interviewed using a questionnaire that measured their perceptions of the reading process. Results showed that all classrooms tended to be oriented toward a fragmented skills approach to reading instruction, and that only one classroom qualified as a high communication environment. Two children from that classroom indicated an awareness of reading as communication, while none of the children from the low communication classroom did so. A total of eleven children indicated an awareness of reading as word recognition or decoding, and three indicated that reading was a classroom procedure. The findings suggest that the communication nature of reading is not being conveyed to beginning readers. (Copies of the checklist and the questionnaire are included in the paper.) (FL)