Worksheets hold a special place among the many well-intentioned--yet ineffective--items in the early childhood and elementary toolkit. They are nearly ubiquitous in some elementary classrooms and are even popular in preschools. Parents are encouraged when they see worksheets in their children's backpacks; they see such papers as indicators that…

One hundred percent literacy is a relatively modern goal. According to The Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago (n.d.), writing was invented in 3200 BC. However, it was not until the Industrial Revolution, in the 19th century, that large numbers of ordinary people began to read and write. Today, most people believe that becoming a…

In an effort to meet the needs of low-income students, a collaborative effort between the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the Hoover City School system was initiated. The university and school system have collaborated for the past four years to change the nature of summer programs, both for students and teachers. This article describes…

The perceived crisis in reading achievement may be misplaced--the real crisis may be what is ignored in the curriculum. People are alarmed at the lack of emphasis being placed on teaching content knowledge in many of today's classrooms. They laugh when Jay Leno takes to the street, interviewing teenagers and young adults who do not have the…

This article describes the study that the authors conducted with Constance Kamii concerning how phonemic awareness (PA) is assessed. The study concerns the validity of the Phonemic Segmentation Fluency (PSF) portion, one subtest of the DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) tests that purports to determine a student's ability…

Over the last 30 years, much has been learned about how children develop as spellers. During that time, the literary confidence of many kindergarten, 1st-, and 2nd-grade children has been damaged by insisting they use conventional spelling when, in their thinking, it is impossible to understand how words can be spelled conventionally. This article…

To evaluate the usefulness of two DIBELS subtests (Phonemic Segmentation Fluency and Nonsense Word Fluency), 107 kindergartners and 101 first-graders who had taken the DIBELS were given a writing-of-words task and the Slosson Oral Reading Test of sight words. In addition, the 1st-graders' DIBELS included an Oral Reading Fluency subtest that…

Examined English-speaking preschoolers' level of writing and their performance on oral-segmentation tasks. Found a close relationship between children's levels of writing and their levels of oral segmentation on a writing task in which they were asked to write four pairs of words, for example, "ham" and "hamster." Concluded that children's…

Compared the longitudinal effects of phonics and whole-language instruction on kindergartners' reading and writing task performance over one year. Found that the whole-language group made more progress in reading and writing, and with more developmental coherence, than the phonics group. (JPB)

Examined four times throughout the school year kindergartners' writing of four word pairs. Found that children generally began writing more letters unconventionally for longer words than for shorter before they began writing the same letters unconventionally for the same sounds. Concluded that the word pairs could identify children who have become…

Argues that traditional classroom practices and educational policies constitute an assault on children. Among the practices considered are standardized testing, homogeneous grouping, drill, fragmented curricula, and restrictions on peer interaction in the classroom. (Author/DB)

Examined children's notions about segments of written sentences. Subjects watched a sentence being written and listened to it being read. The interviewer then asked questions about each word--whether or not it was written and, if so, where. Found that children used word order before phonics to figure out what was written in each segment of the…

Examined strategies used by 12 kindergarten nonreaders who tried to relate spoken words to segments of written sentences. Results suggest that children may first succeed in establishing correspondences between temporal order of spoken words and spatial order of written words when a sentence contains only one functor word. Results show the complex…