In today's educational climate, many teachers find themselves in situations where they have little say in the overarching decisions that influence their teaching lives. Still, there are daily decisions that teachers can make to benefit students, and by uniting their decision-making efforts, teachers can make a difference. The author of this column…

"An Ethics Curriculum for Children," a read-aloud literature-based curriculum, aims to teach elementary school students seven universal attributes of good character. Lessons and home assignments are organized around multicultural stories. The program activities are designed to connect the experiences of characters in the stories to…

A practicum was designed to improve the oral/aural vocabulary which would eventually improve the reading vocabulary of second language learners. The practicum, implemented in a second grade by a media specialist who counted on the cooperation of the classroom teacher, consisted of a read-aloud program in which the students read daily from a…

A practicum analyzed possible alternatives to identify the most successful reading intervention strategies before a child's development and learning is seriously or permanently impaired. K-3 students were identified for an early intervention reading program in a public school setting, through the Students Study Team, which was expanded to include…

A practicum was designed for parents to acquire the understanding, skills, resources, materials, and wherewithal to support the emergent literacy development of their children on exiting the Head Start program to be successful in kindergarten. A simple, cost-effective, comprehensive, multidimensional project including Parent Workshops, a…

A study investigated whether children's early book reading experiences at home were related to later narrative skills, and whether narrative skills were related to school measures of literacy and language. Data were collected as part of the Home School Study of Language and Literacy Development, a longitudinal study designed to explore the…

This paper presents findings from a longitudinal study of reading comprehension development that reveal that there is a negative relation between the amount of time kindergarten teachers spend reading to kindergarten children and the children's reading achievement. The amount of time first-grade teachers spent reading to their students was…

Many librarians would like to provide a reading club which includes not only reading patrons, but pre-reading or read-to-me patrons and those parents, family members and caregivers that care for, work with and read to them. To help library staff and volunteers organize, implement and manage a read-to-me club, this planning handbook is intended to…

A study examined the effects of adult-interactive behaviors during repeated storybook readings upon the language development and selected prereading skills of prekindergarten at-risk students. A total of 53 inner city, low socioeconomic status subjects participated in the 20-week study. Subjects were dichotomized at the median on a measure of…

Insights from research on young children's concepts and attitudes about poetry can assist teachers as they develop appropriate instructional poetry programs. Research reveals that teachers' choices of poems often do not correlate well with children's choices. Characteristics preferred by children include: themes important to children, humorous…

Noting that parent involvement in student schoolwork ranks high as a cause of academic success for most children, this book helps parents act as tutors in reading and writing for their first- and second-grade children. It offers both general guidelines and specific strategies and activities to use for accomplishing specific objectives, such as…

A study investigated the effects of a read-aloud program in the Stockton Unified School District, Kansas, the independent variables being type of instruction, gender, family structure, and perception of family. The dependent variables were Reading Vocabulary, Reading Comprehension, and Reading Total from the Science Research Associates test.…

Two research studies hold promise of assisting educators in developing appropriate recommendations for helping parents help their children learn to read and write. Dolores Durkin studied children who entered school already knowing how to read. She followed the students for several years and found that the early readers maintained or extended their…

A program to improve sixth through eighth grade underachieving students' reading comprehension was developed. Students were identified by comparing their anticipated and actual national percentile scores on the Test of Cognitive Skills (TCS) and the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS). A survey of students' reading behavior, a review of…

A study explored the degree to which preservice teachers perceived that the interactive approach to language arts instruction was valuable in promoting their learning. Subjects, 63 students in two sections of an undergraduate reading course, completed a five-item questionnaire focusing on specific aspects of the course. Quantitative data analysis…