The United States is experiencing an increase in young students developing literacy in English and Spanish. Schools providing dual-language English/Spanish instruction need technically adequate tools to assess reading skills in the languages of instruction, and interpretation of results needs to acknowledge the complexity of cross-linguistic…

This paper suggests that bilingualism can increase the child's metalinguistic awareness and promote an analytic orientation to linguistic input. (Author/AM)

The interview techniques developed by Carol Chomsky were used in a comparative study of the language acquisition of 32 bilingual and monolingual third grade students. After these students were matched for age, socioeconomic status, IQ, family environment (both parents in the home), and reading ability, they were placed in four…

Presented is a detailed discussion of the performance pattern of third- and sixth-grade pupils in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) for the skill area of fractional numbers. The report begins with a brief and general introduction regarding minimum competencies and continues with tables showing the performance levels of non-English…

This paper discusses implementation of Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) with bilingual 2nd- through 4th-grade students. The CIRC curriculum is intended to help students in the early grades acquire a variety of reading and literacy skills. The curriculum centers around "treasure hunt" units that last 5 or more days…

Looks at how a short story by three students in a bilingual third-grade classroom came to be. Examines the literate practices already established in the classroom; the classroom norm of using two languages; learning to include information from multiple sources; and learning that interaction is a valuable part of the writing process. (SR)

A study of bilingual third-graders beginning formal English literacy in a whole-language classroom found that students improved in reading abilities and comprehension, as assessed through miscue and retelling analysis; writing results were mixed; and holistic assessment of overall writing abilities did not show improvement. Students' uneven…

Examined the relationship between a teacher's understanding, and six bilingual, Mexican-American third graders' understanding, of modified cloze reading lessons that were taught during an academic year. Students were able to use context clues and describe what the modified cloze procedure involved. However, students rarely understood the purpose…

In this article, the author relates her difficult experiences as a novice teacher when she started teaching bilingual third-graders in Spanish at Spangler Elementary School in 2002. She relates that her teaching strategy of balancing rigor and sweetness had its rewards as her students' rate of reading proficiency on the Colorado Student Assessment…

A study of Spanish-speaking children in the first and third grade showed that English proficiency was least fostered by reading instruction in Spanish only, followed by bilingual instruction, with those students receiving instruction in English only becoming most proficient but still far less so than their English-speaking peers. Besides…

A study of third- and fifth-grade students found that monolingual students use different reading strategies than do bilingual students reading in their second language. (FL)

A bilingual prediction study was conducted in order to gather information that school districts could use in making decisions about instructional transition for students in transitional bilingual programs. In 1976, 115 third graders were tested in reading, verbal ability, and aural comprehension in both English and Spanish. Attitude toward…

Providing Hispanic elementary students with a great variety of books in Spanish and 60 minutes a week of free reading time resulted in significantly higher Spanish reading performance with no loss of English reading proficiency and significant improvement of reading attidues, compared with control groups. (MH)

This is one of a series of curriculum guides designed to assist bilingual teachers to provide a coordinated program of studies for students in the Connecticut Migratory Children's Program and for any other students whose native language is Spanish. It is felt that an effort should be made to discover the skill level at which a child is…