The teaching approach described in this article was originally designed for kindergarten students who are at risk for reading disorders. In a 30-minute session, students practiced attending to and identifying the spelling patterns, pronunciations, and meanings of common morphological suffixes through listening activities, interactive book reading,…

Neurologist and middle school teacher Judy Willis connects what you do in the classroom to what happens in the brain when students learn how to read, including: (1) Why a classroom has to be safe and supportive in order to overcome barriers to reading fluency; (2) How to jumpstart students who are not well prepared for reading with activities that…

Among 26 techniques presented to assist elementary school students in four major areas of reading comprehension (literal, inferential, critical, and creative) are: visualization of a story's mood and setting; research and discussion about a story's author; and reflection on the significance of a historical story. (CB)

Discusses List-Group-Preview, an activity that combines eliciting prior knowledge with guiding students through a new textbook chapter. (FL)

Suggest that teachers start the school year,each school day, and each daily reading lesson with reading activities designed to motivate student interest in reading. Offers ideas for use at each of these times. (FL)

Arguing that teachers need to provide direct instruction if they expect children to learn to apply semantic or syntactic clues as they are reading, this paper presents a variety of activities for teaching children to use context clues. Among the more than 35 activities described are: gathering clues from pictures, using a language experience…

Dialogue journals, in which students write messages to the classroom teacher and then read the teacher's responses, help deaf and hearing-impaired students build and improve their writing and reading skills. Teachers should use natural, conversational language, let students introduce topics, and share their personal feelings and experiences to…

Reciprocal teaching is a scaffolded technique based on teacher modeling, student participation, and four strategies that good readers use to comprehend text: predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing. Although reciprocal teaching originally was designed for use with struggling readers, this book offers innovative lessons aimed at…

Describes pilot study conducted with fifth grade non-readers or poor readers which uses a child's physical activities in the outdoors to lead to, direct, and develop the printed word. Provides eight reading lesson ideas using interaction with objects in nature to create reading materials. (LFL)

This teaching guide urges the use of sentence combining as a technique to improve both the reading and the writing of students. The guide offers practical activities in sentence combining in forms that will make classroom teaching more interesting for the instructor and elicit more productive work from the student. The guide is divided into the…

With this companion workbook to Judith Birsh's bestselling resource, "Multisensory Teaching of Basic Language Skills, Second Edition," students and practitioners alike will improve their knowledge of multisensory teaching and hone their language and instruction skills. Ideal for both preservice teacher education courses and inservice professional…

Provides a number of ways teachers can use newspapers to teach comprehension and critical thinking and to help students develop sensitivity in awareness of the self, the community, the nation, and the world. (FL)

This book addresses a wide range of reading needs by providing exercises that focus on comprehension and word strategies. It also provides an instructional process for meeting those needs. The instructional process is individualized, and is designed to: (1) assess initial reading competence; (2) direct learners to the chapters specifically related…

Developed by national reading experts for "reading partners" to use with children, ages birth to grade 6, this Spanish-language booklet presents activities that help very young children to get ready for reading and writing, and guide older children to expand their reading and writing interests and skills. The booklet has three sections,…

Intended for teachers of grades 2-6, this book offers methods to help students become lifelong readers. The book's instructions include emphasizing respect for the readers' choices of books and their own unique response to the literature. Information is intended to promote thoughtful analysis of what has been read and to validate readers'…