Discusses five ways to determine the amount and quality of prior knowledge children bring to a topic: (1) free recall tasks, (2) word association tasks, (3) structured questions, (4) recognition tasks, and (5) unstructured discussion. (FL)

Discusses what children know--and don't know they know--about the linguistic concept of the word, with implications for teaching. (DD)

Points out that children must master a great deal of information about form classes, written conventions, and word referent relationships in order to understand what teachers mean when they use the term "word." (FL)

Finds the test useful but criticizes its lack of generalizability of norms and the absence of reliability, validity, or normative information for the Spanish version. (FL)

Shows that fingerspelling makes learning the task of separating the word into its parts fun as well as easier for some students. (FL)

Offers a set of lesson plans that use simple semantic word maps to help students improve their vocabulary knowledge and comprehension in all subject areas. (FL)

Notes two trends in the development of basal-related software and describes the Scott, Foresman Reading Courseware and the Ginn Reading Software. (JC)

Compares the effectiveness of two types of classroom vocabulary instruction with a noninstruction type homework assignment. (FL)

Concludes that there are numerous problems with the test studied. Argues that the abilities it assesses and their relationship to reading and reading instruction are not sufficiently understood to warrant the test's use. (FL)