Tess is a joyful eight-year old girl with epilepsy, frontal lobe dysfunction, and dyspraxia, as well as delays in language, fine motor, and gross motor skills. However, despite her disabilities, Tess happily embraces life. With assistance from a few support professionals, Tess currently functions successfully in a regular education second grade…

Two studies are reported. The first investigated goals for reading with their children held by 294 parents in a cross-sectional sample from junior kindergarten through Grade 3, how these goals are related to parent beliefs about the development of literacy skills, and how these goals may differ across the primary years. The second examined how…

Research Findings: This research investigated the associations among children's preliteracy skills, mothers' education, and mothers' beliefs about shared-reading interactions for 45 Appalachian families. These variables were studied for lower income, primarily European American, families residing in a geographically isolated, small, rural…

The author's experiences in using children's literature to engage her students in mathematics are described in this article. Using the book "The Wolf's Chicken Stew", the author's class participated in an interactive read-aloud, graphed favorite foods from the story, and finally followed a recipe to bake chocolate chip cookies. Reasons for making…

Imagine an active happily engaged, communicative, curious group of four-year-old children investigating and discovering as they play together in an early childhood classroom. Imagine yet again, the teacher beckoning them to gather on the rug to listen to a story. What happens next? Are the children allowed to continue in this curiosity-seeking,…

This report examines the importance and efficacy of oral language, literacy, mathematics, and science preschool curricula and how these curricula can be improved through alignment with research on early childhood development and learning. Detailed, research-driven recommendations are presented for what preschool-aged children should be learning in…

In these days of increased testing and continued failure of inner-city and poor rural schools to meet the grade, it is becoming more and more necessary to turn to the public library to help students reach the ever-increasing goals being set for them. It seems somewhat unfair to hold the schools solely responsible for continued failure when the…

While library programming for children is a staple in most public libraries, it is quite rare in the academic setting. In 2006 the education librarian at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire began offering literacy programs in a library that traditionally discouraged children and community members from using its resources. Successful programs…

This exploratory study describes the instructional strategies and related activities a Grade 1 teacher and I used to promote engagements with informational texts in one rural Jamaican primary school. Some of the instructional strategies and activities were bridging connections from the known to the unknown, reading aloud to increase content…

This annotated discography lists 114 audiocassettes of 56 famous authors reading or discussing their own works. (MES)

Research indicates that reading aloud to children, a key activity in early childhood classrooms, can result in improved reading comprehension, decoding skills, and language skills. Suggestions are presented for using this technique in elementary classrooms. (CB)

The one thing that makes a difference in a child's ability to read is how much that child has been read to. Appropriate books for reading to children from toddlers to 10-year-olds are suggested. Insets in the article present resources for helping to choose books and techniques for reading aloud. (MT)

Picturebook readalouds have been promoted as a rich resource for strengthening literacy development in young children and discussions of picturebooks have become a common--if threatened--practice in the primary grades. One subset of the diverse body of children's literature teachers can draw from is picturebooks with sparse verbal text. Such…

This report presents data on the school readiness of children in the United States as reported by their parents. This report incorporates basic demographic information about the children, parent/guardian characteristics, and household characteristics. These data come from the School Readiness Survey (SR) of the 2007 National Household Education…

"Helping Your Child Become a Reader" includes information about why and how to use language skills (talking and listening, reading, and writing) to help young children grow into readers. Everyday activities and a list of resources for parents to encourage children's love of reading and strengthen language skills are also provided. This brochure…