Academic language includes three skills: (1) use of inferential language (communicating about ideas across contexts); (2) use of narrative language (clearly describing a series of events); and (3) understanding a range of academic vocabulary and grammatical structures. These skills help students better comprehend academic texts both across…

Recent efforts to motivate parents' involvement in their child's literacy development involve informing parents about how to incorporate literacy development into daily routines. Teacher leadership and communication are critical--the more teachers encourage and assist parents and caregivers in supporting their child's literacy development, the…

New Zealand schools increasingly use inquiry to understand and address complex and persistent issues. This requires schools to have committed Lead Teachers with deep knowledge about inquiry. The collection of studies in this book have been compiled by the research team at the Woolf Fisher Research Centre, University of Auckland, to illustrate the…

This short book gives an overview of a curriculum plan, a plan to develop the kind of learners that young children should become. The purpose of this self-directed learner curriculum is to help parents and educators guide young learners so they become capable, purposeful, responsible citizens. It provides an outline of the steps needed to develop…

Understanding a text requires more than the ability to read individual words: it depends greatly on vocabulary knowledge. This important book brings together leading literacy scholars to synthesize cutting-edge research on vocabulary development and its connections to reading comprehension. The volume also reviews an array of approaches to…

In order to meet the goals of No Child Left Behind, standardized testing is preeminent as the sole indicator determining whether states all across America demonstrate adequate yearly progress regarding the improvement of student achievement in literacy education. This book will help teachers and parents raise children's scores on standardized…

This book discusses what can be done to extend literacy and raise literacy standards for all sections of the population, the relationship between home learning and school learning, and the role of parents in their children's education, focusing on the situation in England. It is designed to assist teachers who work cooperatively with parents in…

This report provides research-based answers to questions about literacy development from infancy to age 6, with emphasis on the development of these skills in precocious readers. The question-answer format considers the importance of reading with young children, other activities to help young children learn to read, normal development of reading…

Developed for K-3 teachers to send home with their students, this collection of learning activities and games is offered to help reinforce students' language arts and mathematics skills and to enhance parental involvement. Suggestions to the teacher include sending home only those pages containing activities for skills currently being studied and…

Published originally in 1952, the bulletin "How Children Learn to Read" was the first in a series designed to illustrate the philosophy and principles set forth in The Place of Subjects in the Curriculum, Bulletin 1949, No. 12. It was planned to describe as simply as possible, especially for inexperienced teachers and for parents, the process of…

Noting that some elementary school children may have difficulty learning to read using basal readers, this paper describes the successful implementation of the Big Books for Beginning Readers reading program in a California elementary school. The first section of the paper discusses the problems students were having with reading, including a lack…