In the past few years many states in the U.S. have moved toward full implementation of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act. In doing so, schools have adopted "research-based" early reading models to implement Reading First, a salient component of NCLB. Through structured observations and interviews, the study team examined the…

Examines the influence of a regular book borrowing service designed to enable and encourage parents to read to their children. Finds no statistically significant difference between control and experimental groups on a reading test, but finds an unexpectedly high level of parental interest. (RS)

Examined first-year results of the Success for All (SFA) program, designed to bring every student to grade level in reading by third grade. Found that SFA benefits were most significant at the kindergarten level; teachers were highly accepting of the program; and the program's strengths included cooperative learning, regrouping, tutoring, early…

Apart from the annual returns to the Ministry of Education of Reading Recovery (RR) data (and to a lesser extent, the four-yearly National Education Monitoring Project cycle data), there is currently no national data sets of reading achievement information for New Zealand primary school children. This article uses the national RR data for 2002 as…

Continues the chronicle of the development of a young reader. Details his growth in reading and interests in his third year. (FL)

A former eighth grade reading and writing teacher considers how her experience in a classroom workshop for readers and writers has affected her behavior with her young daughter. Emphasizes providing children with adequate time to read, choice of what to read, and opportunities to respond. (RAE)

Examined preschoolers' experiences with their mothers and during group reading in preschool. Concludes that the patterns of adults' and preschoolers' talk about books support a model of a home-school relationship in which mothers provide an introduction to book reading that teachers expand by engaging children in cognitively challenging…

Describes two action research ethnographic studies that show different sides of a community-centered model of literacy among young children. One examined the storytelling and story reading practices low-income African American parents used with their young children. The other involved encouraging community participation by having parents share…

Describes a course that linked first-grade students using emergent writing skills with university early-childhood majors studying the process of emergent literacy, and, in so doing provided an authentic and meaningful learning context for both groups. Suggests that the pen-pal project demonstrates the value of interactive writing exchanges.…

Researchers and educators acknowledge that early reading instruction is of critical importance, with interventions and remedial programming most effective in the primary grades. Integral to this programming are educators' abilities to assess students' reading strengths and needs, with inconsistent and/or inaccurate practices ultimately threatening…

Early literacy experiences play an important role in later literacy skills and school achievement. Communities offer early literacy experiences in a variety of venues to meet the diverse needs of families. The author of this article provides four vignettes illustrating community-based early literacy activities: (1) private group classes such as…

Presents results of tested theoretical models of the development of print concepts and word reading. Indicates that children expand their knowledge in each of the following print components with age: print, graphic awareness, phonemic awareness, grapheme-phoneme correspondence knowledge, and word reading components. (NKA)

Cites research supporting the theory that young children need several exposures to a story for complete understanding and reports on a study involving six rereadings of one book to a five year old over a two week period in an effort to guide "literary" development. (NH)

Suggests that remedial reading teachers deemphasize skill building in favor of reading aloud to children, replicating the experience of children raised in a book-reading family. (AEA)

Examines the nature of power over literacy (such as knowledge of print conventions, and experiences of participation in reading and writing activities) which children often possess when they begin school. Discusses ways in which teachers sometimes interfere with this power and how they can, instead, enhance it. (MM)