This study investigated the relationships between children's home literacy environments and their early hypotheses about printed words in the year prior to entering school. There were 147 children (70 girls and 77 boys: mean age 57 months, range = 47-66 months, standard deviation = 4.5 months) in the study. Results showed that the children had…

In this article the authors recount the history and challenges of implementing coaching in 153 Georgia elementary schools over the 6-year period of Reading First funding. After outlining the expectations of Reading First, they describe the particular demands of coaching in a reform setting and detail the formative lessons that allowed the program…

Oral narrative skills are assumed to develop through parent-child interactive routines. One such routine is shared reading. A causal link between shared reading and narrative knowledge, however, has not been clearly established. The current research tested whether an 8-week shared reading intervention enhanced the fictional narrative skills of…

Interactive read alouds are important learning opportunities for emergent readers because teachers and peers can actively model and scaffold comprehension strategies, engage readers, and cultivate a community of learners. Using data from a 9 month ethnographic study in an urban kindergarten classroom, this article describes how the teacher's…

Early childhood teacher educators frequently enhance their teaching by reading children's books to their adult students. It is not unusual for faculty outside of early childhood to question devoting precious class time to read-alouds which they may consider a curious, if not frivolous, instructional strategy. Quality children's literature can,…

This study examined the effectiveness of a model of language-focused instruction, delivered by the classroom teacher, on the vocabulary and narrative development of kindergarten children living in high-poverty conditions. There were 22 participants, the majority significantly behind their peers on standardized measures of vocabulary and narrative…

The read-aloud accommodation is one of the most frequently used accommodations. Many educators need training to more confidently select, implement, and evaluate the use of the read-aloud accommodation. Planning by special education leaders can help ensure that test day goes smoothly for students who need the read-aloud accommodation.

This article presents a case study that examined the ways in which the boundaries of what it meant to be a "reader" were constructed and what counted as reading in a 9th-grade English classroom. Through the examination of 2 literacy practices (i.e., teacher-led shared reading and the reading of school texts outside of school), I explore…

This article describes the structure of academic discussions during the implementation of a literacy curriculum in the upper elementary grades. The authors examine the quality of academic discussion, using existing discourse analysis frameworks designed to evaluate varying attributes of classroom discourse. To integrate the overlapping qualities…

The relation between preschoolers' phonological awareness and the frequency and quality of parents' book-reading and reminiscing practices were examined in 54 low-income and ethnically diverse families. Children's phonological awareness was assessed at the beginning and end of preschool. Mothers reported the frequency with which they read books…

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of a program that offered sustained strategic reading instruction on reading abilities of third and fourth graders. The study was conducted among 1,469 children from 40 schools in the Netherlands. Schools were randomly assigned to either the experimental or control group. Multilevel…

Picture books about immigration and citizenship rarely portray the issues that children from immigrant families face every day. Though many of these books dealt with border crossings, very few addressed issues of documentation and unequal access to citizenship in any meaningful way. Also, although there are many children's books that deal with the…

Woollams, Lambon Ralph, Plaut, and Patterson (see record 2007-05396-004) reported detailed data on reading in 51 cases of semantic dementia. They simulated some aspects of these data using a connectionist parallel distributed processing (PDP) triangle model of reading. We argue here that a different model of reading, the dual route cascaded (DRC)…

The read-aloud accommodation (RA) is frequently provided to students with high-incidence disabilities to facilitate their access to learning opportunities during instruction and to allow them to demonstrate knowledge and skills during testing. Empirical support for this accommodation has been somewhat mixed, and has primarily focused on…

Early shared book reading activities are considered to be a promising context for supporting young children's language development. Ninety low socioeconomic status preschoolers and their mothers were randomly assigned to one of three groups: (1) e-book reading; (2) printed book reading; (3) regular kindergarten literacy program (control). Mothers…