Summer Opportunity to Accelerate Reading (SOAR) 2002 was AISD's summer reading program serving 2,251 students completing kindergarten through grade 2 in June 2002. Among students with valid reading scores, 86% made reading gains during the program.

Discusses how the whole-language process provides an authentic approach to lifelong learning. Includes discussions of Cambourne's conditions for learning; Holdaway's natural learning model; Goodman's miscue analysis research; whole-language theory; the role of teachers, students, and the community in language arts; and the role of the classroom…

Describes an ethnographic study that called for observing and listening to young inner-city learners as they engaged in reading and writing, and developing field note accounts about what learners did during these periods. The paper examines complexities in learning to interpret the children's perspectives, such as the need to include home visits…

Examines students' initiations during teacher-led read-alouds of information books in an urban first-grade classroom. This process allows students multiple opportunities to share authority and direct the classroom's work and talk, thus allowing teachers to view them as knowledgeable, capable discussants speaking as experts about information books.…

During the 1989-90 school year, Descubriendo la Lectura, a Spanish-language adaptation of the English Reading Recovery project was implemented in a large urban school district in Arizona. The program is designed to identify first-grade students at risk of becoming poor readers and to provide a series of intense short-term learning experiences that…

This curriculum guide for kindergarten through grade four divides language arts into eight subject areas. Each subject area is covered in a separate section; however, the focus of the guide is on providing an integrated curriculum. The following are included in most or all of the sections: introduction, goals/objectives, evaluation, and…

A continuation of kindergarten and first grade guides, this teachers' manual contains practical suggestions for the implementation of a comprehensive program for second grade students. In the introduction the characteristics of the 7-year-old child, as well as the philosophy and focus of the second grade program, are specified. Section 1 presents…

This annotated bibliography of English as a second language (ESL) materials for grades K-3 is divided into four parts. The first part, ESL texts, lists a number of series or single texts that are designed to teach the spoken language and reading to the elementary school child. The second part is a list of readers that, although were mostly…

This book describes the special way one teacher, Jeanette Amidon, approaches children's thinking, with a particular focus on reading and writing instruction. The root value of her first-grade classroom in Massachusetts is respect for children's ideas, with the children's art and writing as visible signs of the teacher's respect for their thinking.…

A family literacy demonstration project was conducted to offer family literacy classes in three public schools in Philadelphia. Instruction was offered for 2.5 hours per day 4 days per week for parents of kindergartners and first graders from January to June and for parents and children together in July. The project was designed to help adults…

Writing to Read (WTR) is a computer-based instructional system designed to develop writing and reading skills. In the fall of 1985, the WTR program was implemented for the first time in some kindergarten and first-grade classes in Fort Worth Independent School District, (Texas) elementary schools. Research was conducted to evaluate: (1) the…

Stressing the importance of understanding child development, this paper first describes the writing of several children in a kindergarten class who represent various levels of emerging literacy. Based on the descriptions of classroom activities, the paper argues that with a developmental perspective the teacher can build instruction on what the…

Strategies for devising primary grade academic learning activities that promote cultural diversity are provided. Based on the responsive multicultural basic skills (RMBS) approach, the strategies emphasize skill development, incorporate content from a diversity of cultural groups into all parts of the curriculum, and provide each child with…

Free speech samples and aural cloze test scores were collected from 24 Spanish-surnamed children at the beginning of first grade. The children were members of two classrooms, and each class received instruction from a Spanish-speaking bilingual teacher and an English-speaking monolingual teacher. The children were learning to read in Spanish and…

Unit four of the Spanish as a Second Language Strand for grade two offers learning and assessment activities designed to provide the English-dominant child with structures and vocabulary for effective communication in a bilingual environment. The neighborhood is the basic theme for activities in kits 13-16 to help build concepts in a new language…