Literacy educators are often unequipped to help young children contend with the world we inhabit, where linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism are not always valued or sustained. In fact, educators are routinely bombarded by programs that position literacy as a simple, one-size-fits-all practice. This resource will help pre-K-3 teachers…

Most of us recall with pain the unpleasant experiences associated with the teacher's announcement that we would once again initiate a unit of learning designed to both widen and deepen our knowledge of the words of our language. This was said to establish the foundation for all of our future academic pursuits. A strong vocabulary was said to be a…

Teaching vocabulary often began as a poorly organized, extensive list of new terms presented to students each week. Students recorded a selected list of words and sought their meanings. With time devoted to study and review of the new terms, students were considered prepared for a test on mastery by the final class session of the week. The…

Shakespeare, who worked actively with words through punning, playing, and inventing, serves as the model for students to experience a deepening knowledge of vocabulary and love of words. Through instructional activities aimed at increasing word play, word exposure, and word consciousness, students gain the verbal capacity needed to understand…

A study of 25 expert teachers and their shared reading lessons in grades 3-8 suggests that teachers focus their modeling during shared reading in four categories: comprehension, vocabulary, text structures, and text features. (Contains 1 figure.)

The author calls for incorporating into English classes what he calls museum-based pedagogy, arguing that it enables the teaching of multiple literacies: verbal, visual, technological, social, and critical. In part, this pedagogy consists of classroom instruction that enables students to understand the persuasive nature of museum displays--the…

Anna Quinn, an English teacher, describes her use of dramatic activities for interpreting texts along with other techniques to help improve college reading skills. Students have demonstrated measurable increases in reading levels by using drama to fill textual gaps, charades to increase vocabulary, blending into the characters, predicting the…

We tested the effect of a Rotated Protocol Immersion package on the emergence of observing responses as prerequisites for more complex verbal developmental capabilities. Three elementary aged students between the ages of 6 and 7 participated. They were diagnosed with autism spectrum disabilities. The treatment condition consisted of total…

When encountering a word for the first time, information about it is connected to information from the context. There are four levels of word knowledge: never having seen it before; having heard of it but not knowing what it means; recognizing it in context; and knowing it. A full and flexible knowledge of a word involves understanding the core…

Research indicates that deaf individuals do not develop the usual hemispheric specialization for verbal and nonverbal processing and that early severe hearing impairment influences the lateral organization of the brain for interpreting linguistic information. Possible instructional implications include encouraging an early symbol system for…

This booklet was inspired by the need of educators and therapists of preschool students who are blind and visually impaired to share their observations of children with Optic Nerve Hypoplasia (ONH) and the therapies found to be helpful when working with these children. The work done at the Blind Childrens Center is very rewarding, and these…

Study of the arts enhances young people's intellectual, personal, and social development. The arts provide a rich and engaging curriculum that develops students? abilities to think, reason, and understand the world and its cultures. A comprehensive arts education encompasses such areas as the history of the arts, the honing of critical-analysis…

Suggests that traditional measurement-based approaches to evaluation are theoretically inappropriate in whole-language classrooms. Argues that responsive evaluation can be applied at the classroom level and that the data generated will tell more about children's developing control of language than standardized tests do. (RJC)

Describes the formation of the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES), a system formed to foster the sharing of computerized data on language acquisition. Details the governance of the system, the nature of the database, the shape of the coding conventions, and the types of computer programs being developed. (SED)

This bibliographic review aims to present a single comprehensive source of references to facilitate clinical application of data obtained on the vocal activity of normal infants and to facilitate continued research on prelinguistic vocal output. The bibliography cites the published observational, empirical, and theoretical reports that examine the…