Reading skills provide the foundation for academic success. From the beginning of school, students should be taught different ways of using language to help them learn and communicate about academic content. This brief discusses two areas of literacy development that students must learn so that they can do well in school: "foundational…

A program to be used by teachers working with children at the stage of emergent writing, generally kindergarten and grades 1 and 2, and based on recognition of young children's development, is outlined. The project operates on the premise that children can independently learn to write by writing if they are immersed in the appropriate social and…

Problems of dealing with ESL students who are functionally, completely, or semi-literate, or who are not familiar with the Roman alphabet, are outlined, and some solutions to material development and class activities are proposed. Examples and a list of resources are included. (MSE)

The student workbook and teacher manual for an adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) literacy course are presented. It assumes that students have some native language literacy skills but may have had little or no prior schooling. The student book has 10 units, topically organized: alphabet; numbers; time; the calendar; money; school; the…

This nontechnical guide for parents and teachers examines learning to read from infants' babbling to the fluent reading of children reading independently for pleasure. Chapter 1, "Baby Speaks," describes language development in infancy. Chapter 2, "Our Alphabet: Language by Ear and by Eye," presents the alphabetic system and…