Professional learning (PL) opportunities are essential for PreK-12 literacy educators, but too often these efforts fail to help teachers develop and deeply engage with their work. This forward-looking book describes keys to providing effective, sustainable literacy PL that values teachers over test scores and capitalizes on social networks and…

The great number of refugees in the U.S. creates challenges for educators to determine the best ways to embrace refugee children and incorporate culturally and linguistically appropriate classroom practices to successfully meet their educational and emotional needs (Prior & Niesz, 2013). This article aims to contribute to English teachers'…

This dissertation examines the experiences of three Latino emergent bilingual children and their Reading Recovery teacher as they engaged in Reading Recovery lessons offered in English with the support of Spanish. The negative impact of cultural bias and expectations of assimilation into English has implications for needed innovations in classroom…

Modern primary teachers must adapt literacy programmes and ensure efficient learning for all. They must also support children with language and literacy difficulties, children learning English as an additional language and possibly teach a modern foreign language. To do this effectively, they need to understand the applied linguistics research…

In this work, prominent authorities review the latest research on all aspects of ELL instruction (K-12) and identify what works for today's students and schools. Provided are best-practice guidelines for targeting reading, writing, oral language, vocabulary, content-domain literacies, and other core skill areas; assessing culturally and…

Describes a study which examined the literacy approach to Spanish for Native Speakers (SNS) by focusing on one SNS class. The focus was on the relationship between the teachers' and the students' perceptions of the uses for Spanish literacy and the kinds of tasks found in textbooks and assignments. (Author/SED)

Suggests that bilingual children, because of their sensitivity to contexts for using their two languages, are likely to have a heightened awareness of the possible range of contexts for literacy and the range of communicative functions which written messages may convey. Also argues for an apporach to early literacy that acknowledges the importance…

Presents an overview of third-grade bilingual students and their literacy curriculum. Discusses a series of instructional lessons ("strategy wall charts") developed to provide the students with various tools to work their way through literacy blocks as they read and wrote in English. Looks at patterns of internalization that occurred when the…

Impressive evidence shows individual bilingual Hispanic children from low-income backgrounds becoming biliterate in Spanish and English by first grade. Reading is presented to preschoolers as a game; they are first taught to read in Spanish and then in English. Parental participation is crucial. Impact differs according to starting age. (Author/CM)

Research on the effectiveness of literacy instruction of bilingual children is reviewed. Most research on reading in a bilingual setting involves college students in the United States or younger students in other countries, while research on writing in a bilingual setting is only beginning to emerge. The review focuses on the nature of literacy,…

Noting that reading development is a crucial factor in breaking down social, intellectual, and political barriers, this paper uses Nigeria as an example of a developing multilingual country in order to examine the problems and challenges that learners and educators in multilingual societies face. The discussion is focused on children at the…

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…

Argues that the English Only Movement is misguided. Points out advantages of bilingual education and literacy in their native languages for students who begin their schooling with little or no knowledge of English. (SKC)

A study examined a program for advancement of students' literacy to improve their reading and writing skills. Subjects were seven fifth-grade bilingual students in a growing middle class community, located in a suburb of a large midwestern city. The problem of low reading and writing scores was documented in student writing samples, teacher…