Current conversations about children's literacy have focused on the need for more phonics and decoding instruction and have sidelined the importance of children's language development, argues George Hruby. Language development involves more than the ability to decode written language. The ability to understand the meaning of those words is also…

Reading comprehension--the ability to understand the meaning of text--is a foundational ability that enables children to learn in school and throughout life. Children who struggle with reading comprehension in the third or fourth grade are at high risk for dropping out of school, with detrimental effects on their future employment, income, and…

Preventing reading difficulties in the early grades has been a topic of interest for more than a decade. Research has clearly delineated the components needed for early literacy programs to be effective in teaching nearly all children to learn to read. Teacher educators have a responsibility to ensure that candidates gain extensive knowledge about…

This report describes the design and implementation of the three interventions tested in Project Upgrade, one of four experiments conducted as part of the Evaluation of Child Care Subsidy Strategies. The evaluation was a multi-site, multi-year effort to determine whether and how different child care subsidy policies and procedures and quality…

Language and vocabulary represent the very foundation of learning to read and write. Children who do not develop strong oral language skills and vocabulary in these early years will find it difficult to keep pace with their peers. Children use the natural medium of language for thinking. Those who acquire a substantial vocabulary are often able to…

This study of normally achieving second graders, language-learning-disabled children, and adults with literacy problems (total n=27) found that morphological knowledge in spoken language was highly related to morpheme use in written language samples. Results suggest that morphological knowledge does not develop solely as a function of maturation…

Discourse comprehension involves readers or listeners in constructing mental models using local text information, global text structures, and their general knowledge of the world. An analysis of the literature on children's understanding of spoken discourse reveals that young children are capable of forming mental models from texts, but that their…

"Lessons in Character" is designed to promote elementary and middle school students' knowledge about core character education values and, through that knowledge, shape children's positive behaviors and support academic success. It consists of 24 lessons organized around weekly themes, taught through stories, writing activities, and class…