This book gives the reader ideas for providing primary-grade students with literacy learning opportunities that integrate conventional literacies, such as phonics and comprehension, with new literacies, such as multimedia composition and hyperlink navigation. The reader will find a variety of linked activities, including reading children's books,…

Living in an age of communication, literacy is an extremely integral part of our society. We are impacted by literature during our infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. "Literacy for the New Millennium" includes information from specialists in the field who discuss the influence of popular culture, media, and technology on…

The classroom use of the key vocabulary, developed by Sylvia Ashton-Warner as a reading approach--rather than as a reading method--which utilizes the child's actual experience, is the major concern of this book. Materials used and tested for a number of years present examples, outlines, and various methods for eliciting children's dramas through…

This book is based on the belief that learners who are making meaning draw simultaneously on different dimensions of knowing--different forms of expression, different kinds of ideas, and different cultural frameworks. When honored and recognized in the classroom these differences create a richer way to explore the path to knowledge, according to…

After analyzing the leading theories on reading instruction and noting their advantages and limitations, this updated book presents a specific combined approach to reading instruction which draws on the proved strengths of older methods while avoiding their failures. This approach centers around training in effective use of the teacher-pupil…

The focus of this book is on improving reading instruction among disadvantaged minority groups through the language experience approach. Four chapters contain discussions of self-concept, the growth of self-concept, reading instruction and the disadvantaged, and adult literacy. The other 16 chapters consist of bibliographies on the heritage of…

This book seeks to set the record straight about today's "reading wars," and analyzes the three major "battle cries" of whole language critics. In a step-by-step dissection, the book reiterates the three arguments, then explores the most salient studies that support or refute them. According to the book, the three claims are:…

Intended for the language arts teacher, this book focuses on how to develop children's language skills. The opening chapter of the book presents a brief overview of child language acquisition, children's language abilities at a particular age, and how these abilities develop. The second chapter, on the importance of children's literature, is based…

The central focus of this second edition is the same as that of the first edition: to describe the language-experience approach and to identify instructional practices which can be followed to teach reading with this approach. In addition, the volume expands the theoretical foundations of language-experience communication, extends the…

Combining the language experience approach and phonics instruction, this guide provides parents and early childhood teachers a comprehensive resource for developing a strong foundation for pre-readers. The guide offers over 1,000 activities, games, fingerplays, songs, tongue-twisters, poems, and stories for the letters of the alphabet to develop a…

This monograph presents classroom activities that were designed to encourage children to read and write in a self-reliant and responsible manner. The activities were chosen for their relevance to the children involved and because the vocabulary involved was interesting, familiar, and worth remembering and using again. The topics are arranged in…

This book offers 80 original chants for teaching children to play with language, discover their ownership of language, and experiment with language. The book states that chants can provide a strategy that develops reading skills, ease in dramatic situations, sidebars in art work, communication abilities, awareness of self and environment, and…

This anthology of 22 published articles and book chapters written by Dorothy Watson (the first president of the Whole Language Umbrella) were chosen for their historical importance, centrality to Watson's body of work, lack of availability, and/or their ongoing relevance to teachers. Items in the anthology are grouped to reflect major themes…

Representing views on many facets of reluctant readers, the chapters in this book provide suggestions for working with students who function at a frustration level and those who have an aversion to reading. Specific topics discussed in the book's nine chapters are: (1) building language experiences for reluctant readers, (2) home remedies, (3)…

Providing a practical look at the role of spelling in the overall language arts curriculum, this book helps those who interact regularly with young children understand how learning to spell is part of the broader fabric of learning to write in whole language classrooms. After an introduction, chapter 1 provides opportunities to explore how…