Suggests that the real power of the childhood reading encounter is less in the specific elements of story or character and more in what is accomplished by the private interchange between child and book. Discusses the differences between reading and being read to and between reading and television watching. (AEF)

The Bryan Independent School District (Texas) has implemented a primary grade parent involvement program based on a home-partnership model and a contract of cooperation between the parents and schools. By signing the contract, the parents agree to (1) listen to their child read 15 minutes three days a week; (2) read a story a day to their child;…

The Success in Reading and Writing Program (Success) developed by Anne Adams incorporates ideas from many approaches to reading instruction. It uses newspapers, magazines, library books, content area textbooks, catalogs, and other reading materials; it requires an instructional period that is divided into four or five units of one-half hour each;…

Notes that the African oral tradition of storytelling is giving way to an expansion of published works for children. (JC)

When one educator was teaching English in middle and high school, she wondered why so many adolescents disliked reading. Even teen-aged protagonists and up-to-the-minute topics were not guaranteed to be "interesting." Yet something engages these young readers, at times and in some texts. To begin to get some answers, she interviewed…

Offers a narrative history of the life of one young reader, observing him at school and at home in grades K-2. Notes how the social practices and relationships he experienced at his blue-collar home bore upon the task of becoming a reader in school. Discusses increasing difficulties of negotiating between these two different cultural settings and…

This article looks closely at a subset of books about literacy in and out of school by analyzing images of children learning and struggling to learn to read in realistic fiction. There are several books in which characters wish to learn to read, worry about being poor readers, and work hard to learn to read. These books raise important questions…

The Penn State Adult Literacy Courseware project uses a "whole word" approach with some word-building activities in teaching 1,000 high frequency and functional words to adult beginning readers whose children participate in Chapter I programs. The aim of the project is to counteract the intergenerational effects of illiteracy. The…

Initiated in the fall of 1965 in an effort to raise the reading and language levels of skill-deficient students in grades two through six, the Hartford, Connecticut, Intensive Reading Instructional Team (IRIT) program has proven its effectiveness, and has been expanded through Title I funding. Each year, three groups of 45 students are selected to…

Reports that the Estes Attitude Scale suffers from the influence of cultural biases that make it inadequate to measure attitude about reading among low-income, Black students in grades three through seven in the rural southern United States. (FL)

Twenty urban Canadian community health and social workers received six hours of training in family-literacy development-strategies As a result, participants demonstrated a shift in attitudes about literacy, from skills-achievement to sociocultural perspectives on literacy-achievement, and included literacy events more frequently in their own…

Four essays consider aspects of ensuring that every child can succeed in school. The first, "Appearing Acts: Creating Readers in a High School English Class" (Joan Kernan Cone), explores the self-perceptions of students and uses them to inspire their enthusiasm for reading. The cultural sensitivity of the teacher is instrumental in…

This summary report describes the three-year Special Emphasis Project, a large federal program directed at preventing and correcting reading difficulties among elementary school children. Section one of the report provides a brief history of the project, with descriptions of its rationale, intent, major and specific provisions, and the controlled…

Examines a child's stance toward becoming literate in Spanish at home and school. Discusses the kinds of literacy activities he engaged in and the context in which he did so. Points out this child's ability to make connections between various literacy contexts, and suggests ways that teachers can foster similar connections for other children. (SR)

Presents a study of students in Australia, Canada, and England and examines grade nine students' written responses to writing over a two year period and their opinions of the books they read. Suggests that for students of that age, creative written responses to writing are the most imaginative. (JC)