Meeting the demanding requirements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) falls most heavily on the school principal. A variety of credible studies prove that schools with good library programs have students who do better academically as measured by standardized test scores. Administrators may not be aware that they have a powerful ally in the school…

By taking the time to read to and with their children, fathers can play an important role in helping children learn to read. "Dad's Playbook" tells the stories of 20 dads from different walks of life who are giving their kids the best shot at a bright future by helping them learn to read. This National Institute for Literacy Partnership for…

PIRLS 2006 provides countries with the unique opportunity to obtain internationally comparative data about how well their children can read. Countries also will obtain detailed information about home supports for literacy as well as school instruction. For the 35 countries that participated in PIRLS 2001, PIRLS 2006 will provide information on…

This book for third-to-eighth graders explains why government is needed, what it does, and how it works, by providing a grand tour of Washington, DC. The guided reading level is Q-R and the Fry level is 3.8. The suggested grade range is 3-8.

This paper reviews what current research says about best practices in reading instruction for students with mild mental retardation. After introducing some key reading issues (such as effects of early reading failure), two principal approaches to reading instruction are discussed: first, the traditional/bottom-up synthetic approach which begins…

Exemplary teacher research has established that explicit teaching plays a vital role in the K-12 classroom, with particular benefits for struggling readers. This book is a practical resource for explaining reading to students who do not learn easily. The book identifies 22 major skills and strategies associated with vocabulary development,…

In this book the authors note that for too long teachers have been at the mercy of government programmes, which have emphasized the acquisition of literacy as a set of skills. They suggest that an exciting new theory coming out of the New Literacy Studies actually helps students to access literacy skills. They attempt to bridge the gap between…

Both on-line and face-to-face courses rely on textbooks as an important source of information for students. A challenge for instructors in an on-line setting is to insure that students are learning from their textbooks. One way to address this challenge is to use productivity software tools to develop assignments that promote student thinking and…

Written for the general classroom teacher whose class includes English language learners (ELLs), as well as for ELL teachers working in general classrooms, this book portrays ELL students in grades 3-6 who learn essential reading and writing skills and are full members of the classroom community. Throughout the book, the authors emphasize the…

This guide contains material that has been piloted in Tennessee ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) Regional Training Sessions over 2 years. It contains resources for teachers, student learning plans, student portfolio check sheets, information to help new teachers, and Internet sites where training videos and curriculum resources can…

This book contains patterns and activities designed to supplement core literacy instruction, showing students how to work together within large- and small-group settings, independently in learning centers, or at home with their parents. Section 1, "Essential Elements and Skills of a Balanced Literacy Program," provides ideas on how to…

This manual is designed to help Florida teachers incorporate assessment and instruction of phonological awareness into their pre-reading and reading curriculum. The first section describes what phonological awareness is and how it is related to reading instruction. It summarizes research evidence on the role of phonological awareness in reading…

A study examined the effectiveness and the impact of preservice instruction of the second year of the Alabama Reading Initiative (ARI), which is designed to achieve 100% literacy by targeting reading performance of beginning reading and first-grade students, to expand the reading power for second- through twelfth-grade students, and to intervene…

This book for beginning readers focuses on a South African woman named MaMkhize, who has no money to pay the rent or buy food because no matter how much she cries and pleads, her husband spends all the money on drinking at the "shebeen." She asks the "sangoma" for help. Together, they plan a clever trick to help stop her…

This Technical Paper focuses on the new PLATO[R] reading curricula which represent an innovation in the computer-based teaching of basic reading skills and advanced reading comprehension strategies for adults and young adults in secondary and postsecondary academic settings, as well as adult/job skills training. The first section is divided into…