"Harvard Education Letter" is published bimonthly at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This issue of "Harvard Education Letter" contains the following articles: (1) Early Childhood Education at a Crossroads: Access to Preschool Has Come a Long Way, but Critical Choices Lie Ahead (Deborah Stipek); (2) Bridging the…

Parents are the child's first and most important teacher. This booklet begins with a story about the parent of a first grade reader. The parent in the story models methods which a real life parent could employ to help a child learn to read such as finding words that begin with the first letter of a child's name, or taking turns with the child…

This professional development guide is designed for educators who work with secondary students who are struggling in reading and writing and who need intensive, individualized instruction to improve their skills. Examples of students for whom this guide is intended include: students with disabilities, English language learners, and low-achieving…

Part of a series, the purpose of this low-readability/high interest book is to provide instruction and practice in using higher order thinking to develop students' reading comprehension skills. The comprehension skills addressed in the book meet state standards for secondary students grades six and up, and the reading level is fourth and fifth…

This study reviewed the literature on graphic organizers to investigate effective ways to teach the vocabulary of mathematics, noting that mathematics is recognized as the most difficult content area reading material. The literature indicates that effective use of graphic organizers can help develop conceptual understanding by promoting student…

A study investigated the relationship between reading habits and writing skills in French of 223 Canadian secondary school students. Students were surveyed concerning their demographic characteristics, attitudes about learning and reading, recreational activities, and reading habits and reading materials. Writing skills were evaluated using a…

The Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES), launched in Spring 1997, is an integral part of Head Start's system of Program Performance Measures, an outcome-oriented accountability system examining the quality and effects of Head Start, by annually collecting data on a nationally representative sample of programs, classrooms,…

Based on James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier's novel "My Brother Sam Is Dead," this lesson plan presents activities designed to help students understand that one way to learn about the past is to read historical novels; and that some people take one side or another in a war or other conflict, and some find themselves caught in the…

Students can learn a number of words in any given day from television, parents, through reading, and through classroom activities. The activity in this lesson plan focuses on students expanding their written vocabulary to make writing passages more vivid and pleasurable to read. The lesson provides an opportunity for individual and group work, all…

This study explores the relationship between English and Japanese in bilingual children. The Bilingual Verbal Ability Tests (BVATs) were administered to 40 children of Japanese heritage and their mothers residing in the San Francisco Bay Area. All the subjects were either enrolled in bilingual programs in public elementary schools or attending…

Grading work is one method that provides students with feedback to know how well they are doing in a course and for teachers to know how well their students are comprehending the material they have taught. In the literature, there was one recurring idea for the type of grading that appeared to be successful for high school English Language…

Examines language practices in rural and urban schools in Burundi, looking at specific episodes in two classrooms that show how Kirundi/French code contrasts contribute to the marginalization of Kirundi to the status of village language and reinforce the dominance of French as a vehicle for knowledge of the larger world outside school. (eight…

Discusses advantages of learning Latin, including enriching vocabulary and higher verbal test scores on the SATs; describes extracurricular activities based on Latin; and includes a lesson plan for library media specialists, suitable for intermediate grades whose curriculum includes ancient Roman life, that integrates language arts and social…

This article highlights the link between lexical and phonological acquisition by considering learning by children beyond the 50-word stage and by applying cognitive models of spoken word processing to development. The effects of lexical and phonological variables on perception, production, and learning are discussed in the context of a…

These two single-subject, alternating treatment design experiments with a total of seven young children (Navajo speaking and Spanish speaking) found that receptive learning of novel words in a second language reaches a preestablished criterion in fewer trials under a bilingual compared with a monolingual condition. (Author/DB)