Play in the school setting is a highly contested issue in today's restrictive academic environment. Although many early childhood educators advocate the use of play in their classrooms and emphasize the importance of play for children's learning and development, children beyond the preschool and kindergarten years are not often afforded…

A classroom teacher capitalizes on social learning and reader response theories to challenge her accelerated first-grade readers by implementing literature circles. The aim of this action research was to identify a clear view of "how" to use literature circles with first-graders and "what" might be accomplished. Three…

The purpose of this study was to examine how the social practices of African American families--with children in grades K-2--changed as a result of participating in a family literacy program utilizing African American children's literature. The families were exposed, through a series of workshops, to an abundance of children's literature…

The purpose of the present study was to investigate students' perceptions of their experiences with literature circles across elementary grades. A stratified random sample of 24 diverse students in grades one, three, four, and five were individually interviewed to obtain perceptions of their attitudes toward literature circles and their…