Suggests ways to provide special spaces and materials in early childhood classrooms that promote literacy development, including classroom library centers, writing centers, and content area centers. (MM)

Describes computer software, including "The Electronic Bookshelf" and "Return to Reading," which provides motivation for recreational reading in various ways, including: quizzes, games based on books, and whole language activities for children's literature and young adult fiction. (MM)

Refutes the notion that remedial readers are unable to use context clues, arguing that poor readers simply have difficulty with automatic word identification. Suggests three approaches to heighten students' sensitivity to the use of context clues. (MM)

Discusses several ways to evaluate reading and writing skills in a whole language classroom, including evaluation checklists, holistic evaluation of writing, and miscue analysis. Provides a literacy development checklist for reading and writing. (MM)

Describes 13 practical ideas for classroom teaching at the elementary level, including writing classmates' biographies, keeping a class diary, and improving emergent readers' vocabulary with word cards. (MM)

Examines how Hispanic bilingual kindergartners and first graders create and express personal meanings by illustrating parts of stories read aloud in class, dictating responses, and writing original narratives. Notes that literacy activities should be tied authentically to questions and interests expressed by children in the classroom. (MM)

Describes questions, games, and activities which promote critical reading as early as kindergarten by encouraging critical thinking. (MM)

Asserts that cooperative reading teams--reading groups composed of students at varied reading levels--motivate poor readers to learn by developing positive feelings about reading. Describes several reading, language, and content area activities for cooperative reading teams. (MM)

Describes how an excerpt from an electronics magazine challenged the author to examine problems in reading comprehension. Notes the sources of difficulty in understanding demanding text, and states that prior knowledge--not isolated comprehension skills--is necessary to create meaning from a text. (MM)

Describes how basals help translate research into practice (responding to changes in theory), and provide on-the-job training for teachers. Notes that although continued revisions of basal series are necessary, they are useful for teachers who do not have time, energy, or expertise to develop reading materials and activities. (MM)

Emphasizes, with reference to Piaget, the importance of cooperative learning. Presents a text model describing the four aspects/participants of literal communication, and asserts that children confront a text from all aspects simultaneously. Describes three examples of interpersonal reading and writing activities observed in Austrian classrooms.…

Describes and evaluates a remedial reading strategy--assisted reading--which uses a motivating series of popular children's books to improve the performance of remedial readers. (MM)

Outlines 26 activities to help parents develop informal learning experiences which foster an interest in reading, including bookmaking, grocery shopping, read aloud sessions, and zoo trips. (MM)

Defines two types of antimony--minor, contradictory statements that have major effects--and shows how they abound in reading research. Concludes that the problem of antimonies must be resolved before research, on empirical grounds alone, can effectively improve practice. (MM)

Describes and evaluates the Primary and Intermediate versions of the Test of Language Development-2 (TOLD-2). Concludes that TOLD-2 tests should be used only as screening instruments, and suggests that poor performance on the TOLD-2 be followed with naturalistic language sampling and analysis. (MM)