This booklet is the companion guide to a videotape intended for those who work with young children and want to make their childcare facility a place where reading and books are a part of every child's day. The 10-minute videotape demonstrates practical techniques for reading aloud, choral reading, using Big Books, and storytelling, and suggests…

Bringing together the home, school, and community in the task of developing children's abilities to read and appreciate literature, this book presents annotations of over 400 books suitable for children ages two through seven. Titles annotated in the book represent classic and contemporary picture books, story books, and concept books, as well as…

Educators frequently recommend that children read aloud to parents at home in the belief that the activity will positively contribute to children's literacy growth. From a research perspective, however, little is known about these at-home reading experiences. Using a social constructivist theoretical perspective, the present study investigated the…

This guide is designed to help program leaders build into their child care and latchkey/after school helper programs a "Helpers Promoting Reading" program, in which adolescents read and review books with young children, thus improving the reading skills and attitudes of both groups, and responding to the developmental needs of early…

This ERIC/RCS Special Collection contains 10 or more digests (brief syntheses of the research on a specific topic in contemporary education) and FAST Bibs (Focused Access to Selected Topics--annotated bibliographies with selected entries from the ERIC database), providing up-to-date information in an accessible format. The collection focuses on…

A practicum developed a whole language kindergarten at-home reading program. The target group was 27 sets of parents of children in a kindergarten classroom who volunteered to participate. The objectives were to increase the parents' knowledge of whole language techniques; increase their level of comfort in using whole language techniques at home…

A study examined the effectiveness of an immersion-in-literacy program in a first-grade classroom. Six of the 22 students (all six were boys) indicated on a reading attitude survey that they did not like to read books. The classroom teacher set up her classroom so that it fostered literacy development. Some of the experiences and activities she…

A practicum was designed to enhance students' knowledge of well known children's literature that is represented by the Newbery and Newbery Honor Award winning books. One fourth-grade and one fifth-grade class comprised of students reading at or near grade level at a metropolitan school with a nearly 97% Hispanic student population worked within a…

An instructional strategy adapted the Big Book reading experience to the adolescent student to increase enthusiasm for reading, vocabulary development, and sound word attack and comprehension strategies. Criteria for choosing books to read aloud with teenagers include: (1) select well written books; (2) select books that reflect students'…

Accompanying a collection of 85 books for teenagers donated to local service organizations in Indiana, or donated in the name of such an organization to local libraries, this pamphlet offers suggestions to help the organizations engage adolescents with books and lists the paperback books given to the organizations. Suggestions in the pamphlet…

A practicum addressed the emergent literacy needs of preschoolers at a daycare center. Goals were to increase: (1) the amount of time parents read aloud to their children to 15 minutes a day; (2) the number of library books at the daycare center from 40 to 200; and (3) the number of volunteers at the center from none to 4 who would read aloud to…

A study investigated whether the much publicized campaign geared to parents and teachers about reading aloud to children has had any impact on the U.S. public. Subjects, 236 parents and 17 teachers from an urban private school with a large Portuguese population, filled out questionnaires. Results indicated that parents have been influenced by the…

A study was conducted to survey the attitudes of elementary students toward read-aloud experiences. Subjects were 575 children in grades one through six. The results of first grade students were omitted due to inconsistencies in their responses. The remaining grade level distribution consisted of 137 second graders, 121 third graders, 145 fourth…

This study was conducted to investigate how literature and literacy could merge, what effect immersion in a particular type of literature had on the writing and oral stories the children were producing, and what effect spontaneous talk and storymaking had on the classroom literacy process. Each day for 8 weeks, 10 fifth-grade students met…

Part of a series designed to provide practical ideas parents can use to help children become readers, this Spanish-language booklet focuses on how to encourage young children to write. The booklet describes the kinds of writing that children do, offers suggestions on how to encourage children to experiment with spelling, and urges parents not to…