Argues that singing and songwriting activities can complement a wide range of literacy learning activities, and offer emerging readers learning opportunities with active participation. Provides examples of singing and songwriting activities that support early literacy instruction in the areas of letter names and sounds, phonemic awareness, print…

Describes an instance of literacy learning involving the author and his two daughters at a local bookstore. Discusses how this literacy event challenged the author to consider alternative assumptions about reading, learning to read, and the relationship between reading and literacy. Offers lingering questions about what theoretical assumptions…

Traces research citations noted in advocacy and policy documents to their original sources to determine whether use of"decodable text" in early reading instruction is research-based. Researchers could locate no reliable, replicable research to support policy assertions that using decodable text, as defined in California and Texas policy…

Replicates a study of a "common unit" task which includes modifications to the original procedure. Confirms the pattern observed in the original study: beginning readers learning by a mixed method can identify shared phonemes but not shared rimes in the common unit task. Discusses implications. (RS)

Discusses the implications of Goswami and Bryant's (1990) theory about important causal connections in reading for classroom teaching, and reviews more recent "rhyme and analogy" research within this framework. Discusses new research on the nature of the English spelling system and the representation of linguistic knowledge. Emphasizes the…

Compares two views about the importance of environmental print in children's learning experiences. Assesses environmental print knowledge in non-reading preschool children and relates it to word recognition training. Finds words from the known logos were more readily learned than the matching control words, but only in Study 1 were the known logo…

Examines social contexts of beginning readers through an exploration of three dimensions that have an impact upon beginning readers' reading events: peer relationships and their role in children's reading development, children's oral language and discourse, and constructivism and sociocultural perspectives on learning. Offers implications for…

A study involving 28 teachers found Peer-Assisted Literacy Strategies (PALS) enhanced reading performance of first-grade students, although not equally for all learner types. Students who were low-achieving who participated in both PALS and teacher-directed small-group mini-lessons benefited more greatly than students who participated only in…

Considers Goswami's (1999) review of available evidence for and against the role of phonological rime awareness and analogy theory, concluding much of the evidence fits an alternative (non-rime) interpretation. Explores implications from this evidence for teaching and the role of rime analogy should play in the British National Curriculum. (SG)

Suggests guidelines for selecting African American children's literature of high literary and artistic qualities for grades K-3. Presents guidelines for all teachers, whether they have African American children in their classrooms or not. Provides a list of 27 selected recent books with an African American context that meet the same criteria for…

Argues that extensive reading is the most profitable way of continuing to acquire a second language (L2) outside and after a language course. Offers a description of the proficient reading process and the typical L2 learner reading process and suggests a reading program that aims to help L2 learners become successful readers. (Author/VWL)

A longitudinal (from kindergarten through grade 2) study with 244 children evaluated 3 hypotheses regarding the causal relationship between phonological processing abilities and reading acquisition. The study found a bidirectional relationship between phonological processing skills and reading skills and stability in individual phonological…

Considers how the development of reading proficiency in children is perhaps the highest-ranking educational objective of legislators, administrators, teachers, parents, and the community. Determines if parental training and involvement in the teaching of selected reading lessons increased their first-grade children's reading levels. Finds that the…

Study uses predictable books to compare three reading treatments reflecting different components of a whole-to-part instructional model. In three first-grade classrooms, beginning readers working with isolated words in a modified word bank activity learned more words than when they worked with sentence strips. Discusses implications for the use of…

Study identifies home literacy and literacy interest as two independent sources of literacy experience among 92 kindergarten prereaders. Together, they accounted for significant variance in oral vocabulary and on a letter-name and letter-sound measure of early written language. Discussion focuses on print exposure versus explicit print-sound…