Presents ERIC documents that provide information about the competencies needed to become a successful reading specialist and about the manner in which those competencies might be gained. (FL)

Traces the history of minimum competency testing in the United States from 1890 to the present. (FL)

Reports on a study in which the reading, language arts, and spelling achievement test scores of pupils who had completed six years of nongraded elementary reading instruction without marks were compared with those of pupils who had received traditional, graded instruction with marks. (HOD)

Argues that it is important to consider just what the written language requires of learners so that educators may understand reading and writing disabilities and find appropriate methods of remediation. To do so, a theory of written language must be developed that regards the alphabetic systems as just one particular development among several that…

Presents the author's speech delivered at the Second Moscow Book Fair in 1979 and excerpts from her diary of the trip. (HOD)

Reports on an experiment that investigated whether third graders designated as good readers were significantly better than poor readers at hypothesis testing when decoding words. (HOD)

Discusses research on language development and the conditions that facilitate and inhibit language learning; discusses the basal reader approach to language development and proposes spontaneous talk as an alternative format for teacher/student interaction and language development. (HOD)

Presents some ideas for teaching critical and creative reading to both gifted and average readers. (HOD)

Explains how semantic webbing (a process for constructing visual displays of categories and their relationships) works with a basal reader story and presents some teaching strategies for effective semantic webbing. (HOD)

An annotated bibliography of children's books dealing with Czechoslovakia and Czechoslovakian-Americans. (HOD)

Reviews information about three major dimensions along which phonics measures vary: (1) group v individual administration, (2) production response (say or write) v recognition response, and (3) the stimuli or materials used to evaluate phonics. (HOD)

Reviews and discusses the Test of Reading Comprehension (TORC), which represents an interesting departure from the more conventional tests of reading comprehension. (HOD)

Offers reports on a method for teaching letter sound recognition through the use of familiar tunes, a project in which students create question-and-answer exercises about reading selections, and a Minneapolis project in which events featured in the daily news are described on microfiche for children to read while riding the school bus. (HOD)

Discusses why and how writing can be taught in the elementary school and suggests some materials that can support an elementary writing program. (HOD)

Points out that current alarmist rhetoric about widespread reading failure is not based on facts. (HOD)