"Using Comic Art to Improve Speaking, Reading and Writing" uses children's interest in pictures, comics and graphic novels as a way of developing their creative writing abilities, reading skills and oracy. The book's underpinning strategy is the use of comic art images as a visual analogue to help children generate, organise and refine their ideas…

Designed to help preservice and inservice teachers use assessments to identify problems and employ appropriate strategies to help their students become better readers, this text includes 12 case studies that detail children's literacy struggles. The cases are embedded within a framework of research-based instructional interventions related to best…

"On Teacher Inquiry" could be read as an answer to the question, "Teacher Research: What's in it for the students?" This new volume in the "NCRLL Collection" addresses the relationships among teacher research, teacher practice, and student learning. The authors observe, analyze, raise questions, design methodologies, and build relationships with…

This book shows how teachers and specialists can be better informed about students' reading and writing abilities by observing students engaged in the processes of reading and writing than by administering isolated tests. The book demonstrates where traditional approaches to assessment fail and how to better help struggling students. Each chapter…

Fulfilling a need for careful and thorough synthesis of an extensive body of findings on reading, this report presents leading experts' interpretations of both current knowledge of reading and the state of the art and practice of teaching reading. The introduction contains two claims: (1) the knowledge is now available to make worthwhile…

Intended for reading teachers, this book of articles about reading and writing was written by teachers who intended to ask new questions about reading instruction. It bases its practice on a teaching philosophy in which teachers expect their students to work together, not segregated into proficiency groups. The first section contains articles…

Resulting from an investigation of reading programs that refuse to tolerate acquiescence to the inevitability of reading failure, this book describes what works and why in adolescent literacy, through case studies and through observations gleaned from extensive literature searches and site visits. Chapters are as follows: (1) "Adolescent…

Designed for low-level adult learners, this book contains true stories of 20 men and women who have faced and overcome serious challenges in their lives. The book is intended to inspire and motivate developmental students in basic reading and writing classes. The book can be adapted to different instructional approaches--some teachers may wish to…

Reading skills are crucial to the academic achievement of students at the middle and high school levels. Do your students have the strategic reading skills they need to succeed? Do your teachers effectively integrate reading instruction into their classes? What do your teachers do if they have students who have difficulty reading? This third…

A new teacher confronted the reading and writing needs of 22 fifth-graders in a small South Texas community that is home to Mexican American migrant laborers. The children, many of them Spanish language-dominant, were performing significantly below grade-level norms; many did not read or write at all. In 1 year, these students were reading and…