Reading and the Disadvantaged: Some Psycholinguistic Applications for the Classroom Teacher.

Rather than labeling the poor or slow reader as "deficient, different, or drprived," and more recently, "perceptually or neurologically impaired," the reading teacher should educate himself to recognize, accept, nourish and channel the abilities and needs of his students. Suggested are several learning activities that can aid the teacher and be used to enhance the students' reading abilities--some of which include: (1) active manipulation of print, (2) use of printed messages which elicit active, immediate response, (3) rapid visual presentation of larger syntactic units rather than letters or single words, (4) writing out conversations, (5) cloze procedure for improving use of context clues, (6) grammatical substitutions, (7) prolonged sentence games interrelating multiple visual concepts into a major idea, (8) vocabulary practice, (9) reconstruction of scrambled words or syntax, (10) sentence interrelationships, and (11) unit-centered projects to provide "reading to learn experiences." These activities are intended to supplement existing developmental and corrective reading programs, and can provide students with the kinds of practice necessary to develop more fluent reading skills. (A bibliography is included.) (HS)