Now in its sixth edition, "Striking a Balance" clearly illustrates how to create a comprehensive early literacy program that places direct skills instruction within the context of rich and varied reading and writing experiences. Text discussions, dynamic activities, and valuable appendices provide a variety of effective instructional…

The quick adoption of iPads into the classroom, coupled with the many apps targeting early literacy skills, offers a new way to build early literacy skills with emergent and beginning readers. However, young children may be more proficient with the technology than with the literacy concepts, and may not be maximizing learning, or even learning at…

This book of supplemental exercises is one of a series of books designed to provide educational materials for students in addition to the instructional texts in the Adult Learning Skills Program. Exercises in this basic level book are for the language arts subject area. Course numbers and exercise topics are: 201 (sight words, long vowels, hard…

New readers must be taught a variety of decoding skills to allow them to increase fluency and get on with the process of meaning making. Four of the most important strategies of decoding are: (1) using context clues; (2) developing a sight vocabulary of whole words; (3) analyzing the parts of words; and (4) attending to the letter-sound (phonics)…

Reading readiness is defined, and the assessment of emergent literacy is discussed. An informal Reading Readiness Inventory is proposed to provide a profile of students' specific strengths and weaknesses at the beginning levels. The assessment comprises such subtests as oral cloze, sound/symbol relationships, and instant recognition of high…

This literacy kit is designed for adult students reading at the 0-2nd level and their teachers or tutors. It is divided into eight sections: basal reader, phonics, sight words, spelling, writing, comprehension, generative words, and survival skills. The basal reader section consists of a cross-reference guide relating chapters in the reader to…

The purpose of this curriculum guide is to assist Training Specialists in teaching Adult Basic Education/General Educational Development (ABE/GED) students basic skills in language arts and mathematics. The guide begins with an introduction (purpose, overview, adult learner characteristics, teacher type), curriculum policies, curriculum structure,…

This guide is intended to assist teachers and volunteer tutors who are teaching adults and teenagers to read. The nature and extent of the adult illiteracy problem and the process of learning to read are discussed in the first chapter. The characteristics that are desirable in basic reading tutors and those that are encountered in adult learners…

Discusses current research on how children understand the symbol system and its link to meaning; how they learn to write like authors, including editing and writing for different audiences; how they learn to become literary critics and to discover new worlds in books; and how different classroom contexts can encourage different types of literacy…