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Fast Start is a program designed to get primary grade children off to a successful start in learning to read through intensive and systematic parental involvement that is coordinated through the school and is based upon proven and effective methods of parent-child interaction around reading. The program is simple to learn, easy to implement, efficient in the amount of time invested by parents, and cost-effective for schools or other educational agencies wishing to implement it. In Fast Start, parents and children read a brief highly predictable and interesting text each day. The reading involves parents reading to children, neurological impress/paired reading, and moves toward children reading on their own. Repeated readings help build fluency, word recognition, and comprehension among children. After the text has been read, parents and children engage in word bank/word sort/sentence building activities using words from the current and previous texts. Preliminary studies of Fast Start have demonstrated that it can have positive effects on primary students' word recognition, fluency, and overall reading proficiency. (Contains 89 references.) (Author/RS)

A study tested the effects of an approach for improving reading fluency on the general reading and fluency development of second-grade students in regular classrooms. Subjects were from two elementary schools in a large, urban, ethnically diverse school district. There were 30 students in 2 classrooms in a school located in a working class residential setting and 24 students in 2 classrooms in a school located in an inner-city neighborhood. One classroom in each school employed the Fluency Development Lesson (a 10- to 15-minute instructional activity that incorporates several key principles of effective fluency instruction) daily for 6 months. The other classroom in each school was given a control treatment. Pre- and posttesting consisted of subjects being administered a modified informal reading inventory. Results indicated that, aside from improvements in oral reading rate, no other statistically significant treatment effects were observed. However, results also indicated that: (1) all subjects in the study (particularly the experimental subjects) read at a rate above second-grade norms at the posttest; (2) experimental subjects' oral reading rate was higher than normal for some passages; (3) experimental subjects increased their reading rate at a much greater rate than normal; and (4) experimental group teachers reported significant improvements in students' reading performance and attitude. Findings suggest that specific lessons directed at improving reading fluency may be of some value for early elementary grade readers. (Six tables of data are included; 30 references are attached.) (RS)

As in processing oral speech, proficient reading involves "chunking" written texts into meaningful phrase units. Unlike oral speech, however, cues for segmenting the written text at the proper points are not clearly marked in the text. One method for helping readers identify and use phrase boundaries is to mark such boundaries in the text. A study reviewed research conducted over the past four decades that has attempted to facilitate subjects' reading by providing marked cues to phrase boundaries. Although as a whole the research is not conclusive as to the efficacy of phrase-cued texts in aiding comprehension, it shows promise for helping improve the reading performance of at least certain types of readers, particularly for younger, poorer, and hearing-impaired readers. Phrase-cued texts seem to be facilitative for readers who have yet to achieve maturity in syntactic sensitivity. However, a level of competency in word recognition may be necessary before phrased texts can be effective. Issues to be explored in future research include topics such as points of transfer to and maintenance of facilitation on conventional texts. (One table of data is included and 73 references are attached.) (SR)

A study was conducted to verify and extend the limited research on children's home reading. Subjects, 26 third- and 40 fifth-grade students from two elementary schools were asked to respond to questions concerning their home reading habits and were also interviewed. Data analysis revealed a significant difference between high- and low-ability students in frequency of home reading, suggesting that high-ability readers, at both third- and fifth-grade, do engage in home reading activities more often than low-ability readers, confirming earlier studies. Findings suggest that the combined influences of home and school help make reading successful and pleasurable for the child and hold the key to improving the child's reading ability and willingness to read. (Three tables of data are included.) (NH)

A study examined the perceptions elementary school students hold toward writing and writing instruction, and questioned whether these perceptions vary by the kind and nature of instruction provided. A total of 96 students in grades three and four in a large midwestern middle class school took part in the study. The students were divided into two groups: (1) one group participated in a traditional approach to writing instruction defined in terms of separate, sequential skills being taught during an assigned period using a basal reader; and (2) the second group participated in a more informal approach allowing students to negotiate with the teacher concerning the choice of themes, book genres, writing and reading assignments, etc. Student answers on forced-choice questionnaires designed to probe their perceptions, interests, and their behavior toward writing indicated that students' perceptions do vary with the kind and nature of the instruction. Students in the informal classes appeared to have an advantage over their counterparts in the traditional classes across all probes employed in the study, and they saw writing as an enjoyable and meaningful activity that was initiated for their own purposes. Findings suggest that teachers and curriculum specialists need to evaluate critically the methods and tasks used in writing instruction. (Five tables of data are included.) (NH)

In recent years, teacher education curriculum has become more focused on the "back to basics" issue of teaching, encouraging teachers to manipulate students and classroom environments to attain one goal: academic learning. Critics claim this narrowing of the teacher education process has led to negative social consequences where children are represented as things or raw material to be made into finished products. Following Urie Bronfenbrenner's suggestion that preservice teachers should have opportunities to enter into relationships with their students, and school curriculum should integrate academic learning with prosocial or altruistic development, the elementary teacher education program at the University of Georgia assigned daily dialogue journals to be written between each student teacher and a young student to provide the student teacher with a vehicle for entering into and developing a relationship with a student in a limited period of time. Daily entries were made in the journal (notebook) by both the student teacher and the child, with the student teacher instructed not to correct the entry or use it for didactic purposes. Although early entries tended to be superficial in many respects, later journal entries indicated that a sense of trust and rapport was beginning to emerge between journal partners at the same time skills in written communication were being promoted. (NH)

In order to test the efficacy of having college students read texts in which phrase boundaries are explicitly cued, the phrased text treatments were administered to 42 college students from 3 developmental reading courses in one southeastern university. An experimental group was given the phrased texts, while a control group was given the conventionally formatted texts. A brief true-false quiz followed each reading of a text to insure that the subjects were reading for meaning. Results indicated that the phrased text treatment did not lead to any better (or worse) comprehension on the conventional texts for the experimental group. Although both groups increased their reading rate over the course of the treatment, the increase in rate for the control group was significantly greater than for the experimental group. (A table of data is included and 21 references are attached.) (JK)

A study examined the relative effectiveness of repeated readings and listening-while-reading in promoting reading fluency. Subjects, 20 third grade students in a community in the southeastern United States, of high, average, and low reading levels, had their reading fluency measured in two cycles: subjects who repeatedly read a passage in the first cycle repeatedly listened to a presentation of a passage in the second cycle, and subjects who repeatedly listened to a passage in the first cycle repeatedly read a passage in the second cycle. Results indicated that there was no significant difference for reading rate or accuracy by order of presentation of treatment and that both methods were effective in improving reading fluency. (Two tables of data are included; 15 references are attached.) (RS)

Jackdaws are collections of interesting artifacts that provide information about a particular subject, period, or idea, and build background and interest in works of literature for children. Jackdaws are easy to construct: practically anything that is related in some fairly direct way to a piece of literature and that can aid a student's comprehension or interest in a book is eligible, including photographs, recordings, movies, period songs or music, news articles, time lines and maps, biographical sketches of authors, and lists of related books. The teacher can introduce jackdaw items either as a prelude or as a conclusion to a book, or even at appropriate points in the the story. They can also be placed in a reading corner for independent exploration. As students become familiar with jackdaws, they can be asked to add to existing ones or to construct ones of their own, an excellent extension activity following the completion of a story or book. Students can then share their jackdaws with the class or in small groups. Preservice teachers who have used jackdaws in their classroom training report that the collections helped involve bored students, increased understanding, and made classroom discussions more vital. Jackdaws also seemed to attract students to books, a primary goal of reading instruction. (HTH)

Noting that the media can be powerful instruments in the hands of creative teachers, this paper explores the use of media as instructional tools to promote growth in thinking and language processes (primarily reading and writing). The paper views media form and applies it to the interrelationship of experience, thought, and language. It proposes three models of media implementation in the experience-thought-language processes: (1) media as stimulus experiences for children, (2) media as experiences formulated by children, and (3) media as aids to the thought/formulative processes of children. The paper notes practical implications of the models for reading and writing instruction, and describes actual curricular programs that employ media in the ways suggested by the models. (Author/FL)

This paper presents a curriculum model designed to incorporate the concept of collaboration through a student partnership program with retired persons. This descriptive study is based upon on-hand observations by the author during the course of the program. Thirty eighth-grade students were paired with retired persons who lived in a retirement village. The students collaborated with their partners in a number of tasks, focusing primarily on relationship building. Through a mixture of classroom and field experiences, student activities centered around the themes of communication, history, the aging process, and careers. Specific activities included oral history interviews, daily journal keeping, movie viewing with partners, large and small group discussions, communication training, readings, reports, simulation, a book-binding project, and party planning. Students received English and history credit for their participation in the six-week partnership program. This curriculum is viewed from the perspectives of academic coursework and collaboration, relationship building and collaboration, and caring and collaboration. Evaluations of the program were positive on an academic as well as an affective and attitudinal basis. Collaboration allowed the children in this program to gain a different view of history, improve communication and listening skills, and learn to cooperate and work with others. (LH)

A study was conducted to explore readers' ability to identify information of high and low importance. Specifically, the study explored (1) whether the ability to prioritize or structure information in texts was consonant with proficient reading, (2) whether the ability to prioritize information from texts was dependent upon the memory capacity and/or decoding ability of the reader, and (3) whether the ability to prioritize information that is read follows a developmental sequence. Subjects--75 third-grade and 62 fifth-grade students from two elementary schools identified as high, middle, or low reading achievers--read orally and silently an expository passage from an unfamiliar elementary social studies textbook. They then rated units within the text as of high, middle, or low importance. Analysis of student scoring indicated that in both third and fifth grades the more proficient readers appear to have a greater ability to identify priority information in expository texts. Results suggest a developmental trend, because at every achievement level the performance of fifth graders was greater than that of third graders within the same achievement levels. The major implication of this study points to the need for children to be given aid and instruction in the identification of important pieces of information from texts. (EL)

A study was conducted to explore first grade students' conceptions of reading and writing, and how those conceptions may be associated with and influenced by the type of reading instruction they receive. The study was conducted in three separate classrooms, each based upon theoretically different models of literacy learning: (1) a content-centered mastery learning program; (2) a traditional, eclectic, basal reading approach; and (3) a child-centered literature approach. All children were interviewed individually concerning their conceptions of reading and writing. Children's reading achievement levels were also obtained from the teachers. Responses were rated according to the degree to which they were meaning-based or related to the deep structure aspects of language as opposed to the degree to which the responses were letter-sound based or related to surface structure. The results reflected the nature of the classrooms and the children's ability levels. Students' conceptions of reading and writing were highest or most meaning-based in the informal or literature-based classroom. The traditional or basal class students had the middle-level mean score, while mastery learning students had the lowest or most analytical score. When correlated with achievement level, the middle achievers had the lowest reading conception scores and the highest writing conception scores. Both reading and writing achievement scores for the informal classroom tended to decline from low achievers to high achievers. Results suggest that the type of instruction and the context for instruction significantly and quite powerfully affect the way that first grade children perceive literacy and literacy activities, and that this effect changes with the students' achievement level. (HTH)

Recent reading research has identified three reader variables involved in fluent reading: automatic word identification, contextual word identification, and text phrasing. To confirm the validity of these variables in the reading process, to test reading models employing them in an integrated and interactive manner, and to identify developmental changes in the models, a study was undertaken involving 77 third grade and 65 fifth grade students. The students read orally a social studies passage and identified within-sentence breaks in the passage. After a buffer task, they were asked to retell all they could remember from the passage, then completed a multiple choice comprehension measure and a standardized reading achievement test. A model using the variables was then hypothesized, fitted to the study data, and tested using structural equation modeling. The findings suggest that the variables are valid surface level factors involved in fluent reading, that they interact in leading to comprehension, and that the nature of their interrelationship was not static, since developmental changes occurred. (FL)

A study examined adult readers' phrasing ability to determine (1) if passage difficulty was a salient variable in readers' sensitivity to phrase boundaries in reading; (2) if phrase sensitivity was an issue of concern for young adult readers; and (3) if difficulties in phrasing were due to an overabundant or an inadequate sensitivity to phrase boundaries in texts. Data were obtained from 60 undergraduate college students, 30 of whom were identified as good readers and 30 of whom were enrolled in a reading skills course, by asking them to identify phrase boundaries in two texts varying in difficulty. Results revealed an interaction between reading ability and text difficulty. In the easier text, both good and poor readers performed at the same level. With the more difficult text, the performance of the poor readers remained at the same level as that of the easier text. Further analysis indicated that errors in phrasing were due more to a relative insensitivity, rather than too great a sensitivity, to phrase boundaries. Continued investigations into the development of readers' phrasing ability appear to be called for. (One figure and five tables of data are included; 27 references are attached.) (KEH)