Outlines the procedures for organizing a book club for elementary level students. Describes how a book club motivates children to read and gives them the opportunity to share, enjoy, and exercise their oral communication skills. (MM)

Reflects on some of the issues that have been raised in this column over the past six years, including readability formulae, reading assessment, and the use of basal readers. (MM)

Describes how to map a short story. Notes that story mapping gives students an indepth understanding of the concepts of protagonist and antagonist, as well as a visual image of the story's shape and structure. Provides a sample short story map. (MM)

Argues that authorship, in the sense of creation and re-creation of meaning, should be a central focus in any model of literacy instruction. Examines the elements of the "traditional" model of literacy development. Discusses the place of text within that model. Discusses implications for classroom literacy instruction. (SR)

Suggests using story maps as a direct technique for teaching students the elements of stories: setting, plot, mood, and theme. (MG)

Highlights three areas of technology that may have an impact on the future of teaching, especially as it relates to reading: nanotechnology, hypertext, and telecommunications. (MG)

Describes children's use of social conversation to not only understand a story's character, point of view, time, and setting, but to make connections between the stories and real life. Recommends a variety of specific literature-based "conversational" activities that effectively reduce problems of differential discourse styles and…

Offers 12 suggestions to principals who want to be effective instructional leaders in literacy education. (MG)

Uses an acrostic of the word "vocabulary" to present enjoyable and effective strategies and activities for vocabulary instruction with elementary students. (SR)

Considers ways to describe complex learning that teachers would find useful, especially with respect to the teaching of reading. Identifies a generic set of ecological factors that seem to support such complex learning. Refers to these factors as "conditions of learning." (SG)

This book teaches that U.S. geography includes both natural and human-made landmarks, and that all 50 states and all major landmarks can be found on maps. The suggested grade range is K-3; the guided reading level is L; and the Windows on Literacy stage is fluent (levels 13-18).

Showcasing assessment practices that can help teachers plan effective instruction, this book addresses the real-world complexities of teaching literacy in grades K-8. Leading contributors present trustworthy approaches that examine learning processes as well as learning products, that yield information on how the learning environment can be…

Many schools are beginning to use Response to Intervention (RTI) in the classroom, and educators have found that it has made a difference for many students. The purpose of RTI is to identify those children who are struggling in school and to ensure that each of those children receive just the right instruction or intervention to be successful.…

This paper reports findings from a large-scale evaluation undertaken to explore the impact of the "linguistic phonics approach" (LPA) on young children's reading. The LPA is a systematic and applied programme that differs from traditional phonics programmes. For example, rather than ask children to look at letters and speculate on the…

In the author's experience, a significant source of reading difficulty for many beginning and struggling readers are misconceptions about print concepts so basic teachers assume their students are aware of them. Many children fail to grasp implicit principles of print such as the following: the reader cannot make up the words, the order of letters…