Nearly 40% of all fourth graders in this country cannot read at grade level, and this number rises to 60% for children from poor families. This gap in learning increases as students go through grade school and is a primary reason for failure. Ironically, this problem comes at a time when there is research to demonstrate that nearly all children…

Drawing on the skills activities found in a variety of basal readers, this book helps teachers who often struggle to reconcile the mandates of direct instruction on basic skills with the preferences of teachers who prefer to teach using children's literature. The book presents lessons built on a list of skills that students should learn in grades…

Drawing on the skills activities found in a variety of basal readers, this book helps teachers who often struggle to reconcile the mandates of direct instruction on basic skills with the preferences of teachers who prefer to teach using children's literature. It presents lessons built on a list of skills that are usually included in the third-…

Suggests class activities to increase interest and improve reading skills in basal reading programs. (RB)

Article considered the ingredients for effective teaching of language arts. (RK)

Stresses the importance of setting clearly defined goals and objectives when determining class activities in reading instruction. (RB)

Acknowledging that consumers need to look for certain information on store coupons, this lesson plan uses the overhead projector for teaching elementary school students how to systematically read and use coupons. The lesson emphasizes informed consumerism and provides a practical opportunity for students to apply the skills of vocabulary…

Guidelines are presented to help teachers apply specific criteria for choosing microcomputer software and adapting courseware from other disciplines to the teaching of disabled readers. The guidelines discuss how to provide individualized instruction by ascertaining the readability of materials and the reading ability of students. Guidelines also…

Spoken Words, a modified language experience approach to the study of vocabulary, offers college instructors an opportunity to individualize vocabulary instruction and to demonstrate a variety of the most powerful vocabulary learning strategies in a natural language setting. To implement Spoken Words, the teacher must first model the procedure by…

Sentence combining techniques designed to improve reading comprehension are described and studies showing a positive correlation between the two are cited. (MKM)

Presents twelve activities designed to convince the student that reading can be fun and not boring. (JM)

Suggests using an ultraviolet or "black" light as a tool for storytelling and reading aloud, and describes four black light activities which bring an extra measure of excitement to books. (JM)

More than five years of research offers little evidence that students who attend federally funded remedial and learning disabled reading programs improve their reading skills. The three assumptions underlying these programs are discussed. Ways teachers and schools can evaluate their programs are listed. (MT)

Presents a method for teaching poetry that attempts to make the (1) teachers' scholarship relevant to the students and (2) students' ignorance a source of knowledge for the teacher. Outlines an eight-step procedure that represents a useful introduction to poetry and gives students a technique with which to approach any poem. (JD)

Describes two newspaper-based ideas for each month of the school year. (LHW)