The purpose of this investigation was to explore how teachers' knowledge of read alouds might be shaped by opportunities to explore the crafting of picturebooks and the nature of collaborative meaning-making. Participants were enrolled in a graduate children's literature course across one academic semester. Data included pre and post interviews as…

We explored whether knowledge building through read alouds of a conceptually coherent (CC) set of texts might support children's incidental acquisition of vocabulary in these texts and listening comprehension of related texts. Eleven classrooms of first (n = 83) and second grade students (n = 112) were randomly assigned to read alouds of either a…

Although research provides ample evidence of teaching methods that facilitate students' learning of specific word meanings, the potential of instruction to impact students' general vocabulary knowledge has remained an unanswered question. This article reports on a three-year formative experiment that developed, implemented, and tested a long-term,…

Theory of Mind (ToM) is a skill of social cognition recently of interest to literacy researchers. This article presents initial findings from a pilot study investigating the use of ToM to teach theme identification and theme statement formation to beginning readers who are less-skilled in comprehension. The authors designed a brief, 1:1 listening…

In the present project we tested the hypothesis that tutorial situations with peers would benefit children's reading motivation. Participants were from elementary school--80 fourth-graders and 80 second-graders. We used a questionnaire to assess reading motivation. In the tutorial sessions we developed a Paired Reading Program. The children who…

Provides examples of indirect instruction of vocabulary and discusses five guidelines for direct instruction. (MG)

Describes a project in which underprepared college freshmen in a basic skills English class heard materials read aloud while they followed along in the text. Concludes that the students made gains in writing skills but not in reading. (FL)