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…

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…

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…

Improvement-oriented feedback has been shown to be more effective at raising writing achievement than simple evaluative feedback. This study investigates whether teachers differ in the feedback they give to weak and strong writers as well as how feedback differs across grades. Interviews were conducted with 15 teachers about the feedback they gave…

This study describes intra-individual change in strategic behavior of five second-grade students during three months of guided writing instruction for informational text. Data sources included sequential coding of writing behavior from videotaped writing events and analytic assessment of writing products. Students' development of self-scaffolding…

This study investigates how two elementary teachers begin to use technology in a private school that had access to technology at many levels. Using a collaborative teacher-research model, the researcher specifically examined how to support teachers' practice as they integrated technology tools within their literacy curriculum. Due to a supportive…

This research reports on one area of a larger study in Western Canada examining the literacy activities of families from culturally diverse backgrounds. The research focused on parents' interactions with preschool children in storybook sharing and children's emergent reading development as measured by the "Test of Early Reading Ability-2…

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, the Turkish-speaking population in the United States increased significantly in the 1990s and has risen steadily over time. Today, the highest concentration is located in the states of New York, California, New Jersey, and Florida. Kaya (2003) reported a geographical dispersion across the U.S., from New York to…

By analyzing the prior knowledge of African American students, this study explored the relationship between cultural orientation of literature and reading comprehension to determine its effect on low, mid, and high level readers. Over one hundred 8th grade students from four different public schools read short stories from three different cultural…

This study includes a spelling inventory and attitude survey that were administered to pre-service education undergraduates. Analyzed using traditional performance levels as guidelines, no students scored at an independent level, 71% scored within an instructional level, and 29% scored at a frustration level. Inventory results and survey comments…

Perhaps educators shy away from serious consideration of "fun" because the term is typically associated with the kinds of activities found on the playground rather than in the classroom. According to the first, third, and fifth-graders involved in this study however, different definitions of fun can be applied in different contexts and these…

Direct instruction teaching methods have been found to promote the acquisition of literacy in developing readers. Equally important, learning strategies that allow children to construct knowledge through active participation increase their motivation for reading and writing. This action research was designed to explore the effectiveness of direct…

This article describes findings from a classroom-based action research project conducted by two in-school teachers, a literacy coach and a 4th grade teacher, implementing a new integrated literacy and social studies curriculum and the changes they made in curricular practices and beliefs over a three-year period of time. A university professor…