Describes a supplemental pull-out program that helped struggling first graders become independent readers who could participate more successfully in their classrooms. Describes in detail how small groups of children were taught using a 30-minute "literacy group" format offering a fast-paced, tightly structured, and well-balanced instructional…

Describes the Said Web, an instructional strategy that encourages students to examine clusters of words and the words' linkages to one another so that vocabulary study does not occur as lists of isolated words, but rather as meaningful groups. Outlines eight instructional steps for the Said Web, which can be used with young children and modified…

Describes a strategy reading tutors can use with elementary school children to help bring their attention to the targeted skill in their reading instruction, done by demonstrating to the child the reading behavior that is intended for instruction. Shows how the child then can articulate the purpose of the skill and the rationale for learning it.…

The authors--a second grade classroom teacher and a university professor of education--decided to collaborate. Melanie wanted to find out if she could help her students increase their reading and writing comprehension by presenting a sequence of events in an activity (for example, the steps in building a house) and then have the students write the…

Using the first 4 waves of data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten cohort (ECLS-K), this piecewise 3-level (time-student-school) growth-curve model provides a portrait of students' reading growth over the first 2 years of school. On average, students make much greater reading gains in 1st grade than they do in kindergarten.…

The California Right to Read program is for schools interested in changing or revising their reading programs. Right to Read offers services and materials designed to guide schools through program planning. This approach is based on the philosophy that California Right to Read can most effectively serve a school by working with its staff to plan…

The Reading First initiative is a central part of the federal "No Child Left Behind Act" of 2001. Reading First's primary goal is to improve reading instruction and student performance in kindergarten through grade 3. By March 2003 only half of the 50 state plans had been approved for funding. Approved states included seven Southern…

Describes the origins and continuing successes of the New Adventure in Learning (NAIL) program in the Leon County (Florida) school district. NAIL's effectiveness in tackling reading problems through a combination of group instruction using basals and newer, diagnostic/prescriptive, individualized techniques has led to the program's national…

An intensive reading clinic used the Massive Oral Decoding (MOD) technique to help 10 reading disabled students (grades 7 and 8) increase independent reading skills. MOD stresses large amounts of reading practice at the student's independent level. (CL)

Describes collaborative efforts by the Strategic Literacy Initiative at WestEd and secondary teachers and administrators in California to develop and implement an interactive approach to reading improvement called Reading Apprenticeship in an effort to help adolescent readers break through the "literacy ceiling" in all their subject area…

Addresses the problem of finding a quick, easy, and effective way to teach necessary background knowledge for new topics so teachers can build the specific schema children will need to comprehend the text they read. Describes a mural lesson as an organized way for teachers to talk about and use pictures to provide students with information that…

The longitudinal study of 70 children with reading disabilities (followed over four years) and 35 reading disabled children (followed for eight-point-six years) found that rate of improvement in reading and spatial reasoning in disabled and normal children was similar but that reading disability tended to persist into young adulthood. (DB)

Describes three different types of discipline-oriented English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) reading courses: multiple content courses, with readings from several subject areas; paired courses, where students enroll in a mainstream class paired with an ESL reading class; and theme courses, with readings taken from one specific mainstream discipline.…

Describes 10 "literacy day" activities that one California elementary school has used successfully schoolwide, typically one such day per month, to make reading fun and purposeful, while developing a sense of community. Includes: spread-a-quilt day; teacher exchange day; turn off the TV; Dr. Seuss day; community readers; schoolwide…

This article reports that Republican and Democratic leaders of the U.S. Senate education committee have joined the debate over the implementation of Reading First, with a call for an investigation into the federal program by the watchdog arm of Congress. The request to the Government Accountability Office follows allegations that federal officials…