This article examines how one educator embraced Vygotsky's concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) while using drama to scaffold learning about Dr. Seuss's "The Lorax" for first-grade students. This learning event is interpreted with reference to the ZPD and the New London Group's pedagogy of multiliteracies. The author asserts…

The "Spalding Method"[R] is a language arts program for grades K-6 that uses explicit, integrated instruction and multisensory techniques to teach spelling, writing, and reading. The program and its textbook, The "Writing Road to Reading," provide 32 weeks of lesson plans. Students work on program materials in spelling,…

"Reading Mastery" is designed to provide explicit reading instruction to students in grades pre-K-5. One of several Direct Instruction curricula from McGraw-Hill, "Reading Mastery" is available in two versions: (1) "Reading Mastery Classic" (for grades pre-K-2) aims to help beginning readers identify letter sounds,…

Following a model for an extended-day kindergarten program that had been in operation in select schools for nearly 20 years, a southeastern Virginia school division expanded the Extended-Day Kindergarten (EDK) Program with an additional 40 classes in 39 schools during the 2006-2007 school year. The EDK Program supplemented the traditional half-day…

This study explored how teacher variations in use of a web-technology of known effectiveness, affected growth in literacy. Teachers used ABRACADABRA (ABRA) (http://grover.concordia.ca/abra/version1/abracadabra.html), in Grade 1 Language Arts classes. Children (N = 60) across three classrooms were exposed to ABRA activities and a control class…

This article describes some of the conceptual and methodological issues that arise when researchers use teacher logs to measure classroom instruction. Data and examples come from the Study of Instructional Improvement, which used teacher logs to study patterns of literacy instruction in schools implementing three comprehensive school reforms. Over…

This paper describes a comprehensive set of studies designed to assess the potential for commercial reading programs to teach reading in science. Specific questions focus on the proportion of selections in the programs that contain science and the amount of science that is in those selections, on the genres in which the science is portrayed, on…

A latent growth model was used to investigate the longer term efficacy of phonics and integrated language arts instruction as well as amount of such instruction on children's reading development, using the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study data set (kindergarten through fifth grade). Type and amount of instruction were…

As teacher quality becomes a central issue in discussions of children's literacy, both researchers and policy makers alike express increasing concern with how teachers structure and allocate their lesson time for literacy-related activities as well as with what they know about reading development, processes, and pedagogy. The authors examined the…

The purpose of this manuscript is to describe how elementary teachers used their experiences in a storytelling inservice training to teach lessons in language arts, science, social studies, and bilingual education. Qualitative research methods were used in simultaneously collecting and analyzing data. Storytelling was found to be a valuable tool…