Now in its sixth edition, "Striking a Balance" clearly illustrates how to create a comprehensive early literacy program that places direct skills instruction within the context of rich and varied reading and writing experiences. Text discussions, dynamic activities, and valuable appendices provide a variety of effective instructional…

The theme for the 62nd annual conference of the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers was Educating for a Just Society. Connie Briggs, previous Program Chair, reminded us that, "Education has always been the foundation of a democratic nation. It is important that our students understand the principles upon which our nation was…

The author created these engaging mini-books to help her own kindergarten students learn and practice sight words. They are now collected in one place. Each reproducible mini-book introduces one or two new sight words and reviews others, so the books are progressively more difficult. A quick assessment form helps teachers choose the book that is…

Teaching phonemic awareness can be boring and repetitive in the hands of a teacher who wishes to just use a workbook approach. This delightful book packs loads of fun into 75 lesson plans, providing educators with myriad creative strategies for integrating word study with children's picture books. Each lesson includes a read-aloud book…

Most struggling readers, including those with reading disabilities, have difficulties recognizing printed words. This unique, lucidly written book synthesizes the research on how children learn to read words skillfully and translates it into step-by-step strategies for the classroom. The author demonstrates how to plan and implement a coordinated…

This monograph is based on research designed to (1) identify the vocabulary words introduced at each grade level by the basal reader series adopted by the Georgia Board of Education; (2) determine the extent of overlap among the books is the series; (3) compare these lists with other recognized word lists; and (4) generated a list of words for the…

Weaving together the latest knowledge and best practices for teaching children to read, this indispensable text and professional resource provides a complete guide to differentiated instruction for diverse learners. Uniquely integrative, the book places the needs of English language learners and students with disabilities front and center instead…

The Ekwall Reading Inventory is a set of reading passages ranging in difficulty from preprimer through ninth-grade level and contains instruments for assessing students' knowledge of letters, phonics, basic sight words, vowel rules and syllable principles, and contractions. The reading passages are designed to measure students' oral and silent…

Experienced educator Donna Whyte has compiled her ideas for using film containers in the classroom into "131 Ways to Use Film Containers" so that they can be shared with other teachers. She includes engaging ways to use them in teaching children about word families, sight words, and punctuation marks; skip counting, estimating, and predicting; and…

Kindergarten is a time for playful and enriching learning activities that support children's literacy emergence while enhancing their social and cognitive development. The routines of a busy, engaged, productive kindergarten classroom are vividly brought to life in this information-packed book. Demonstrated are whole-class and small group…

For all educators who are working to improve reading achievement, this handbook provides clear instructional approaches for successfully building students' vocabulary knowledge--knowledge essential for strong reading comprehension. With teacher-friendly sample lesson models, this book can be used to boost vocabulary instruction in any reading…

Implementing numerous changes and deletions from the fourth edition, the fifth edition of this book aims to balance an emergent, social development environment with a sharper awareness of children who have missed out on much of the natural literacy development teachers would so much like to enhance. All chapters in the book have been updated with…