Shares the author's efforts to implement instructional strategies that reflect current understanding of written language development with children identified as developmentally delayed. Notes that the information gathered will be useful for both special education and regular education personnel planning literacy instruction for special needs…

Discusses the theoretical framework behind, the benefits of, the implementation of, and the perspectives on student-led conferences using portfolios. Presents suggestions for preparing a class to share their portfolios during their conferences. Notes that it gives students a clear sense of their strengths, their weaknesses, where they stand, and…

Explores how district curriculum leaders select literacy programs and materials for their district and what factors influenced their decisions. Explains the methodology used and examines the findings which emerged upon analysis of the data gathered. Concludes most districts assembled a curriculum committee comprised of teachers and administrators…

Surveys the implementation of language experience and considers its benefits. Describes how teachers use language experience to demonstrate that language is used to express ideas and thoughts. Concludes that literacy educators need to redouble efforts to model Language Experience at all levels of professional development and to link theory with…

Shows why aesthetic reading is a crucial pedagogic component in lessons using historical fiction and non-fiction. Provides criteria for selecting high quality books dealing with historical subjects for use in aesthetic reading activities. Discusses specific teaching strategies for promoting aesthetic reading. (SG)

Summarizes the autonomous literacy paradigm often used in schools. Describes an alternative model, ideological literacy, which situates literacy practices within cultural values and practices. Shows how this functioned in a class of 4.5 to 5.5 year-olds, in which children's world of play was linked to the wider world and in which literacy had an…

Describes the "Three for the Road" reading program which sends children home with a backpack containing specific sets of books, activity suggestions, and materials (puppets, a response journal, and writing materials). Elaborates theoretical foundations of the program, tells how to implement it, and shares examples of first graders' and their…

Explores issues of reading instruction with 11 experts representing a range of views toward reading education. Finds unanimous agreement on 3 of a list of 12 easy ways to make learning to read difficult: teach letters and words one at a time; make word-perfect reading the prime objective; and detect and correct inappropriate eye movements. (SR)

Responds to an article in the April 1998 issue of this journal. Shares evidence about the effectiveness of peer tutoring. Discusses literacy tutoring of K-3 emergent readers by volunteers. Explains why tutoring is not teaching, and offers a model for successful tutoring practices. (SR)

Replies to an article in the same issue of this journal, which responded to this author's earlier article. Elaborates two fundamental points of disagreement (the definition of tutoring and the characteristics of the children being tutored). (SR)

Offers brief annotations of 42 illustrated children's books, organizing them into categories of unique friendships, various kinds of stories, distinct ways to communicate, special settings, different events from the past, and a multitude of cultures. (SR)

Describes an action research project carried out by a kindergarten teacher as she incorporated phonemic awareness activities into the daily classroom routine. Discusses classroom activities, how she developed data collection processes, and how her data analysis showed systematic student growth in literacy and enthusiasm. (SR)

Notes that history is always based on someone's vision of truth, expressed through a process of distillation, selection, inclusion, exclusion, reorganization, and prioritizing. Argues that the shorthand, watered-down, or warped history of mainstream textbooks regarding cultural diversity should be supplemented with original documents, fiction, and…

Presents a scenario taken from the author's summer classroom (a brief instructional history of a child heading into third grade but reading at the primary level, followed by an actual classroom dialog that poses a problem). Shares how the author responded to it with goals focusing on making sense and paying attention to print. (SR)

Describes how the author incorporated dialog journal writing (in which university students and elementary school partners hold weekly literature discussions by email) into her reading methods course. Discusses the planning stage, preparation of university students, preparation of elementary school students, the electronic mail discussion, and the…