Young children's meaning-focused skills are foundational for reading comprehension and begin to develop prior to formal reading instruction. In this article, we argue for the importance of supporting meaning-focused skills in early childhood classrooms. We describe authentic, real-life examples of engaging preschool children in activities that…

Much attention has been paid to storybook reading as a context for supporting preschoolers' emergent language and literacy. Inferential thinking is essential to listening comprehension and to reading comprehension. Understanding the story deeply and reasoning about events and characters are central to children's enjoyment and to comprehension…

As teachers organize classroom schedules to meet curricular demands and time constraints, they strive to seek ways to motivate and sustain student engagement in quality vocabulary instruction, enjoyable learning experiences, and interesting informational books. This article addresses these concerns and describes a vocabulary acquisition strategy…

Argues that concepts of literacy develop gradually and that in a natural language environment, saturated with good stories, meaningful conversation, and abundant writing materials, the process can begin even before a child goes to school. (FL)

High-quality professional development is essential in supporting accomplished teaching. But how is the efficacy of professional development evaluated? The authors present several methods for conducting a critical analysis of professional development. Using a large-scale professional development initiative as the focal point, they first explain…

Presents several activities for helping kindergarten and first grade students develop an understanding of the main idea concept. (MM)

Describes an instructional framework "zooming in and zooming out" that helps teachers scaffold student learning of important vocabulary and concepts in social studies. Describes procedures for implementation, depicting a lesson used by a fifth-grade teacher to discuss readings about Harriet Tubman. (SR)

Describes the difficulties students have in learning to read textbooks togain information for content areas and notes ways in which the teacher should promote textbook readiness. Bibliography. (RW)

Offers a set of lesson plans that use simple semantic word maps to help students improve their vocabulary knowledge and comprehension in all subject areas. (FL)

Discusses the literature on children's early thinking about written symbols and offers suggestions for teachers seeking to extend that thinking. (FL)