Describes how a fourth-grade teacher made poetry part of the daily ritual of her class. Describes how students began to read poems, write poems, and love poems enough to work persistently at reading and writing them. Describes a poetry festival that the class prepared. Describes the many effects, both cognitive and affective, of daily poetry. (SR)

A carefully coordinated literacy assessment and instruction framework implemented school-wide can support school teams in making sense of various types of data for instructional planning. Instruction that is data based and goal driven sets the stage for continuous reading and writing improvement. (Contains 2 figures.)

Highlights the teacher's critical role in spelling instruction and provides examples of how to support spelling development in classrooms. Argues that educators need to look closely at children's emerging capacities as writers, focusing especially on the issue of invented spelling, and its use and misuse in classroom practices. (SG)

Argues that captioned video is an innovative and promising approach for improving students' reading comprehension, vocabulary, and motivation. Describes its use in a fourth-grade classroom, and makes suggestions for getting started. (SR)

Describes how a shared poetry exercise, combining whole language experiences with process writing techniques, motivates remedial readers. Notes that this technique helps remedial readers achieve success in writing, build sight and meaning vocabularies, and improve reading fluency. (MM)