Discusses Virginia Hamilton's accomplishments as a writer and storyteller for young people. Suggests activities related to Hamilton's books, including reading aloud, watching a biographical videotape, displaying her books in the library or classroom, and visiting children's and young adult author web sites. Provides an annotated bibliography of 20…

Describes a project that invited immigrant speakers who were developing English-language proficiency to visit elementary classrooms to read aloud a story they had shared with their own children. Despite differing levels of formal schooling and first- and second-language proficiency, every participating parent had a successful experience as a…

Describes a teacher's year-long effort to help a second grader who would not listen to stories being read aloud understand the purpose of storybook reading. Relates her efforts as a teacher-researcher to understand beliefs about reading. Examines story time for what is says about educational equity, and what such classroom rituals may deny some…

Describes a cross-age reading program called Storymates, which connected school and home literacy experiences of 9-, 10-, and 11-year olds through storybook reading to younger siblings, relatives, and neighborhood friends. Discusses exploring story structure in the classroom; reading storybooks in school and at home; how retellings improved; and…

Presents a teaching technique of assessing the child's reading interest, making available a collection of books, and specifying time for recreational reading. Discusses how the teaching objectives avoid the listing of activities for students and focus on behavior to arouse children's interest. (MG)

Discusses how teachers can help students learn to read with a sense of the author--who wrote the book, how, and why. Argues that building a schema for various genres and more sophisticated writing techniques strengthens comprehension and enables students to enjoy books on their own. (RS)

Examines children's comprehension of stories and their verbal interactions during storybook readings in groups of various sizes. Finds that reading to children in small groups results in as much interaction as one-to-one readings and leads to greater comprehension than whole-class or even one-to-one readings. (KEH)

Presents the author's perspective on why children deserve the opportunity to learn to read using high quality literature as opposed to basal readers. Examines (1) examples of good books; (2) ways to find the books; (3) benefits of reading aloud; (4) and advantages of literature-based programs. (MG)

Reports on two research studies investigating whether teachers can enhance third-grade students' written composition skills by reading aloud to them. Indicates that written composition skills improved, especially written syntactic maturity. (SR)

Reports a longitudinal case study of preschoolers' unprompted questions during story reading with their parents. Reports that children ask more questions about pictures and story meaning than about word meaning and graphic forms. Concludes that home reading may affect comprehension more than print awareness. (RS/JAD)

Discusses the benefits of reading aloud to preschool and kindergarten children. Notes that active participation accounts for many of these benefits. Suggests several interactive story reading strategies, including a Directed Listening-Thinking Activity and shared book experiences. (MM)

Twelve effective strategies commonly used by deaf adults when reading to deaf children are discussed. Techniques for combining American Sign Language and English exposure are presented, as are story-telling strategies for maintaining attention, using role play, using eye gaze to elicit participation, and relating stories to real world concepts.…

Presents findings from a longitudinal study of reading comprehension development that revealed a negative relationship between the amount of time kindergarten and first-grade teachers spend reading to their students' reading achievement. Results are discussed in terms of a "displacement theory." Students' reading achievement is related to their…

Discusses how reading children's literature aloud can be used to complement science text information. Lists and annotates intermediate books which contain themes that can be correlated with science concepts. (PRA)

Describes the process of listening within the boundaries of learning. Focuses on whole-language methods in reading that promote whole listening and can help students improve their listening as well as reading skills. (MG)