Teaching rime analogy or letter recoding reading strategies to prereaders: Effects on prereading skills and word reading.

Two experiments and a longitudinal study examined teaching rime analogy or letter recoding reading strategies to prereaders. Grade I children with weak prereading skills were assigned to rime analogy, letter recoding, or control groups. Treatment groups had equal word reading except for with words like sight, where the rime analogy group excelled. Experience with rime analogy increased letter recoding ability, but teaching in letter recoding did not enhance rime analogy. Treatment groups read as many nonwords as did children with high prereading skills, and this was maintained 4 months later. Treatment effects on prereading skills with kindergartners paralleled the Grade 1 results, but reading effects were weaker. Children changed reading strategies when a clue word was present that shared a rime spelling with the test word. Children learned to read with a rime analogy or letter recoding reading strategy, and many developed new reading strategies independently.