This guidance report offers early years professionals seven practical evidence-based recommendations to provide every child--but particularly those from disadvantaged homes--with a high quality and well-rounded grounding in early literacy, language and communication. One recommendation focuses on the importance of high quality interactions between…

Tips are presented for teachers to write letters to parents to encourage their participation in their child's writing program, and suggestions are also listed for parents to help improve their child's writing skills. (CB)

Offering information to help parents understand how writing is taught in classrooms that use the 6-Trait Model for writing assessment and writing instruction, this handbook describes the model and how parents can provide the kind of support at home that would make classroom instruction even more effective. Sections of the handbook are: "A…

Suggesting that the process of reading, however complex, is knowable, and that the scientific study of reading is both necessary and possible, this book brings together what has been learned through the scientific study of reading by carefully observing readers in the act of reading. The book looks at reading in the real world, at how readers and…

A computer program titled "The Bald Headed Chicken," written for the Apple IIE and Apple IIGS, is described. The program enables primary-level students, as well as limited-English-speaking students, to manipulate graphics and text to create their own stories which can then be saved on disk or printed. (Author/JDD)

Intended for parents and teachers, this guide provides all the information needed to lead a first-grade child through 30 lessons or 30 weeks of learning for a beginning speller. The guide helps the child to learn to identify common, logical spelling patterns; leads the child quickly to more complex words; and aids him or her in becoming a…

This set of 70 cards accompanied by instructions on using the cards) can be used by any teacher, tutor, parent, aide, or literacy volunteer, individually or in classes and small groups, to teach the spelling, writing, and reading of nearly all English words to virtually any child (age 5 and up) or adult. The cards can be used for initial or…

Intended for parents and teachers, this guide provides all the information needed to lead a second grader through 30 lessons or 30 weeks of learning for a beginning speller. The guide helps the child to learn to identify common, logical spelling patterns; leads the child quickly to more complex words; and aids him or her in becoming a confident,…

Intended for parents and teachers, this guide provides all the information needed to lead a third grader through 30 lessons or 30 weeks of learning for a speller. The guide helps the child to learn to identify common, logical spelling patterns; leads the child quickly to more complex words; and aids him or her in becoming a confident, independent…

Reflecting Alaska's Reading Performance Standards, this booklet highlights key aspects of what families and teachers can do to teach and support young children as they learn to read using many different strategies. It lists content standards for English/Language Arts and reading performance standards divided into four categories ranging from age 5…

Noting that educators need to capture the interest of primary students early on to make lifelong writers out of them, this paper discusses ways to encourage the writing process in the primary grades. The paper discusses the philosophy of the writing process, what experts say about writing, setting up the environment, writing with lower primary…

Cooperative learning is a teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject. Typical cooperative learning strategies used in grades 2 through 12 involve student teams in which students: (1) work on group projects that emphasize…

Intended for teachers, reading specialists, administrators, students in teacher education programs, and parents, this book contains descriptions of strategies for fostering emergent literacy and steps for carrying them out. An underlying theme is the merging of the art and the science of teaching. Chapters in the book begin with questions to focus…

Children begin school with some very basic ideas about written language and reading. The first is that of sign and message. That a graphic representation, a "sign," conveys meaning is an early and easy concept for children that stems from their visually attending to print in their environment. The realization that spoken language can be…

Aimed at primary-age children, this book brings William Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" to them, recognizing that children, properly guided, will take to Shakespeare's characters and stories like "ducks to water"; in the process they find their inner voices, they collaborate, they improvise, and they communicate. Illustrated with…