A study analyzed teacher and student perceptions of a literature-based reading/writing curriculum for at-risk high school students. Eighteen students, (3 girls, 15 boys) ranging in age from 15 to 18 years, began English 9, a redesigned one-semester literature-based make-up course for students who failed ninth-grade English. Prior to the study, the…

This paper asserts that a mixture of creative movement and children's literature should be used to facilitate children's interest in literature and reading. It is argued that the integration of literature and movement into the educational environment could help lower the degree of illiteracy and ease the growing obesity and other health-related…

A study compared the writing development and ideas about writing of students in a whole language program with students in a skills-oriented program from the time they entered kindergarten to the end of the second grade. Subjects were 22 inner city students who completed second grade out of an original kindergarten cohort of 50 minority students…

Reporting on small-scale classroom research projects dealing with diverse aspects of literacy, this collection of 13 research reports from Canada emphasizes common themes. These themes are: the need for parental participation in literacy and numeracy development, the beneficial effects of tutoring, the need for a wide and varied classroom…

A study examined the effects of prediction training on the reading comprehension and written composition performance of fourth-grade students on the following reading and writing tasks: story recall, story generation, and number of relevant predictions. Subjects, 40 students attending two private urban elementary schools, were assigned to one of…

Research shows that middle school students overwhelmingly cite three characteristics that they like in books they read: (1) humor; (2) mystery and suspense; and (3) reality (true stories about real people). Matching students with appropriate books helps turn students "on" to reading, and it is this "electric" reading that…

This practicum report describes a primary school teacher's use of peer tutoring as a form of individualized instruction for at-risk students in a regular classroom. Targeted students were four 2nd graders and four 3rd graders who did not produce the quantity of work required but scored too high on psychological tests for placement in special…

A longitudinal study, involving five beginning teachers, revolved around questions about how teachers' own emerging theories of literacy instruction are shaped by their interactions with other theories and perspectives and through their own work with students who are learning to read, write, and understand text in schools. Trained in the whole…

The Tombigbee Regional Library in West Point, Mississippi, conducted a literacy program from October 1, 1988 to September 30, 1989. During the period, the program recruited 166 students and 64 new tutors, provided funding for 110 students not eligible for Job Training Partnership Act funding, solicited and used community resources and funds, and…

In the course of a longitudinal study that addressed the questions of how children learn to comprehend what they read and how they learn science concepts, many other research questions emerged. The original longitudinal study investigated how children learn to comprehend what they read. Three school districts with fairly stable student…

A case study showed how a third-year teacher modified the socialized culture of literature-based literacy instruction she found in her second-grade classroom and teacher education program to reach particular children who were having difficulty learning to read and write. Aaron, the subject of the case study, was a second-grade African-American…

Originally developed for the Department of Defense Schools (DoDDS) system, this learning package on using skills and strategies for effective learning is designed for teachers who wish to upgrade or expand their teaching skills on their own. The package includes a comprehensive search of the ERIC database; a lecture giving an overview on the…

A large segment of poor readers in elementary school do not supply prosodic features to print; in other words, they do not use pauses, changes in pitch, or differences in emphasis to show their comprehension. Two methods that help children to supply reading intonation involve using phrasally segmented texts and teacher modeling of the correct…

This study tested the hypthesis that the reading gains of compensatory education pupils in grades one and four exposed to intensive test wiseness instruction would not differ significantly from the reading gains in a randomly assigned control group. Schools offering ESEA Title I classes (N=48) were randomly assigned to the treatment and control…

To asertain the long-term results of preservice courses in reading, a followup study was undertaken with 20 preservice teachers who had completed a 36-hour course entitled "Reading in the Secondary School." Students were given a reading attitude inventory at the beginning and at the end of the course and asked to complete the following…