This bulletin is based upon a conference on beginning reading instruction which brought together professional leaders in the field of reading and related disciplines. Their purpose was to report on research and to review a variety of practices on primary reading. Keynoting the conference, one of America's foremost reading authorities gives a…

This collection of papers examines key failures in modern U.S. education and shows how parents, policymakers, and teachers can make changes that will raise the level of student performance. The papers were presented at a 1997 conference designed to examine how elementary and secondary school students learn and are taught in the classroom. The…

A study was conducted to evaluate the impact of predictable stories given to children from low-income families over a two-year period. Phase one subjects were all the children (N=52) from four Headstart classes; phase two subjects were all the children who had participated in phase 1 and who entered kindergarten after their last year in Headstart.…

The third and final interim report is devoted to analysis of research data relating to a 3-year experimental reading program for Mexican American children at the Malabar Street School in Los Angeles. The program utilized language development methods, individualized instruction, and parental assistance to improve the children's competencies. Using…

The "Born To Read" project helps parents raise children with healthy bodies and minds. Public librarians and health care professionals form partnerships and reach out to at-risk expectant and new parents. The video provides techniques and tips to plan successful programs for babies, including a segment for libraries to use with the…

Current middle-school standards require students to operate at levels of literacy never before expected of 10- to 14-year-olds. This monograph, written for teachers, addresses literacy development in middle-school students, stressing the crucial role of teachers. It suggests that teachers must change the core of educational practice and examine…

According to a recent study by the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) at the London School of Economics, poverty and social exclusion have been taken very seriously by this Government, resulting in high-profile targets, new policies and funding streams. Social exclusion was recognised to consist of multi-faceted and interlinked…

Noting that renaming common folk practices as "emergent literacy" practices legitimizes these unacknowledged ways of learning to read and write, this book highlights the importance of out-of-school literacy experiences and the value of real literature and real writing. It stresses a reciprocal relationship between basic research on the…

This paper deals with strategies for developing literacy skills in nonnative speakers of English. Discussed in the initial section of the paper are four different categories of English-as-a-second-language (ESL) adults and the basic philosophy that underlies the teaching of literacy skills to adults at all levels of literacy. The special needs of…

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…

The difficulties children face as they are learning to read is the focus of this book, which is a collection of children's work (drawings and handwriting), with statements exploring their implications. The introduction discusses the relationship between early writing and early reading, individual differences, the question of age norms, questions…

Based on the thesis that reading is not a passive process by which readers soak up words and information from the page, but an active process by which they predict, sample, and confirm or correct their hypotheses about the written text, this book is an introduction to the theories of the psycholinguistic nature of the reading process and reading…

Designed to be scholarly in content and grounded in research and at the same time be practical and usable for day care workers, classroom teachers, and curriculum specialists, this book discusses various aspects of the view that children's literacy development is a continuous process beginning in infancy with exposure to oral language, written…

This volume contains criterion referenced reading tests for 12 objectives to be mastered in a Spanish-English bilingual kindergarten. The emphasis is on encoding and decoding tasks, vocabulary development and reading comprehension. (AM)

This document is the final volume of a three-volume report on the Right to Read Preservice Teacher Preparation Project. It is composed of ten appendices (H-Q) containing various teaching modules, assessment forms, audio-visual materials, and orientation packages. Appendix H presents instruments for assessing student performance in student…