The purpose of this article is to describe how teachers can foster strategic reading processes in their early literacy classrooms, and how to incorporate a Strategy Perception Interview to assist in documenting students' use and perceptions of these strategies. Descriptions of classroom instruction incorporating literacy strategies and…

Bandura's (1986) theory of self-efficacy suggests that efficacy may be most malleable early in learning; therefore, some of the most powerful influences on the development of teachers' sense of efficacy may be the experience of teaching during field placements and student teaching. Unfortunately, pre-service teachers may not be exposed to good…

This study provides insight into the role of the elementary school writing teacher in helping students learn to "read like writers" (Smith, 1983). This case study documents how one fourth-grade teacher employed a gradual release of responsibility model as she deliberately planned activities that drew students' attention to well-crafted writing.…

Prosody is a means for "reading with expression" and is one aspect of oral reading competence. This theoretical inquiry asserts that prosody is central to interpreting text, and draws distinctions between "syntactic" prosody (for phrasing) and "emphatic" prosody (for interpretation). While reading with expression appears as a criterion in major…

This article describes a pilot study conducted with 10 identified avid adolescent readers who completed the Adolescent Motivation to Read Profile (AMRP) (Pitcher, Albright, DeLaney, Walker, Seunarienesingh, & Moggie, 2007) that includes both a survey to determine students' self-concept and value of reading and an interview that sheds light on what…

The purpose of this article is to examine the developmental spelling levels of one class of 17 third-grade students. In analyzing over 600 student spelling samples, results indicate that these students spanned four spelling stages: (1) letter name, (2) within word pattern, (3) syllables and affixes, and (4) derivational relations (Bear,…

This article explores content area pre-service teacher beliefs about disciplinary knowledge, perceptions of effective content area teaching, and existing beliefs about how to integrate literacy into the content areas. Ten pre-service teachers across ten secondary content areas were asked to describe three important variables in secondary teaching:…

The purpose of this investigation was to determine the effect of props on children's narrative retells. Forty-two children in two comparable K/1 classrooms heard and practiced the same stories over eight weeks. This study found that the props had a positive effect on the children's use of descriptive language, but there was no effect on the number…

This article reports on a study that explored the relationship between reading proficiency and cultural relevance of text for third-grade English Language Learners (ELLs). The author presents the Cultural Relevance Rubric that helps define and determine cultural relevance of texts. Participants used the rubric to rate the cultural relevance of two…

The purpose of this study was to describe secondary pre-service teachers' past reading experiences, present attitudes and beliefs about reading, their attitudes and beliefs about a required content area literacy course, and their predicted use of reading in future instruction. Secondary pre-service teachers (N = 124) of diverse subject areas…

This study examined the relationship between fluency and comprehension, specifically related to the text structures of narration and dialogue. Using descriptive statistics, this investigation first examined fluency and comprehension of three teacher educators and then through action research examined fluency and comprehension of five third grade…

This study supports and extends previous research that suggests there is a relationship between picture naming and a variety of other factors that impact early literacy. The study explores the picture naming/representing ability of kindergarteners (n = 20), their ability to name and draw pictures of objects they could and could not immediately…

The purpose of this mixed methodology study was to identify the frequency of reading comprehension instruction in middle and high school social studies and science classrooms. An additional purpose was to explore teachers' perceptions of and beliefs about the need for reading comprehension instruction. In 2,400 minutes of direct classroom…

This article presents results of a study of 229 kindergarten teachers who completed a survey designed to gather information about the current state of Michigan kindergartens. In addition to detailed data that reveals teachers' literacy instructional practices, teachers provided written responses to the following open-ended questions: What are the…

A growing number of television programs direct their viewers to access an Internet website for further information on a presented topic. The explicit link between television programs and companion Internet websites, both of which communicate information through multiple modes, can be considered a form of intertextuality. Do college students…