This article addresses the importance of opening space for young people to engage in critical media literacy learning using popular culture texts. Children's background knowledge includes a wide-variety of texts that are often ignored or excluded from school curriculum. The author shows how popular music, for example, can offer powerful…

Presents examples to substantiate the observation that children experiment with and benefit from writing long before they receive formal instruction, and suggests ways for parents and teachers to avoid obstructing this natural and healthy tendency. (HTH)

Examines the interrelationships between cinematic and literary works in terms of possible responses, or the possible worlds created when children encounter and create literary discourse. Notes that these responses reflect previous encounters with literature, film, and life. (MM)

Argues that elementary language-arts teachers should expand their definition of "text" to include film, a valuable instructional material. Notes that today's elementary students come to class with a great deal of knowledge about films--prior experiences which teachers can tap into. Discusses the application to film of reader-response theories. (SR)

Explores preschoolers' responses to life and childhood experiences and how this response carries over into their subsequent response to literature. (HTH)

Discusses the effect of previous knowledge on reading comprehension. Suggests reading instruction methods that evoke the readers' experiences, or schemata, relevant to the material. (HTH)

Discusses materials in the ERIC system concerning knowledge or schemata children have when they come to class, behaviors a teacher may observe, and suggestions teachers can keep in mind when planning creative activities that support children's meaning-making efforts. (HTH)

This study describes the interactions of three adult-child reading partnerships in a program that matches corporate volunteers with "at risk" students for weekly hour-long story reading sessions. Using discourse analysis within a sociocultural framework, the researcher identified variation in the way these partners were constructing the act and…

Discusses the author's experiences while attending a writing workshop--and how they reshaped the way in which he taught writing in a subsequent workshop developed in his own district--which encompassed writing through reading, writing environments, focus, writing from personal experience, and listening to students while they learn to write. (HTH)

Focuses on interactive journals and literature study to illustrate four principles: connect students' background knowledge and personal experiences with literacy lessons; foster the use of students' primary language in literacy lessons; create opportunities for students to meaningfully and authentically apply their developing oral language and…

Contrasts, through portraits of five young writers, the writing strategies of children used at home and in a kindergarten writing center that stressed a formal language arts program. Argues that the teacher's approach to writing instruction and the child's writing strategies must be compatible to ensure independent writers. (HTH)

Discusses two facets of the disparity between the way children learn and the way they are tested: the necessity of practice and the importance of prior knowledge. (FL)