The purpose of this study is to examine what effects the mnemonic devices of pictures and stories have on the memorization and recall of multiplication facts. This study was conducted on a fourth grade classroom in which the students were divided into three groups. The first group was given standard flashcards, the second group was given a set of…

Designed for Grades PreK-3, the culture-based story times and extension activities provided in this book give educators the opportunity to share the diversity of global neighbors with young learners. The book covers Australia, Brazil, the Caribbean, China, Egypt, Ghana, Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, the Commonwealth of Independent States…

Presents a dilemma situation with a real conflict for the central characters, two conflicting values or moral issues, and is intended to generate disagreement among students about the appropriate action to be taken. A teacher's guide is included. (Author/SA)

Describes a model home literacy program at the Indiana School for the Deaf. Reviews six case studies of young deaf children in order to explore and describe sign language behaviors which help deaf children grasp reading skills. Claims that sign language and finger spelling can be closely related to early reading and writing at home. (MOK)

Describes a project that invited immigrant speakers who were developing English-language proficiency to visit elementary classrooms to read aloud a story they had shared with their own children. Despite differing levels of formal schooling and first- and second-language proficiency, every participating parent had a successful experience as a…

Contains a series of short, experientially oriented articles on circle time entitled "You Can Make Circle Time Developmentally Appropriate"; "Using Circle Time as a Hub of Curriculum"; "Working It Out Together in Circle Time"; and "Starting with Stories: Building a Sense of Community." (SD)

This article describes a functional approach to language intervention that uses storybook reading contexts with preschool children who exhibit delayed phonological development. Oral scaffolding techniques, including discussions of narrative structure and content words, provide the modeling and metalinguistic descriptions typically used in…

Describes a cross-age reading program called Storymates, which connected school and home literacy experiences of 9-, 10-, and 11-year olds through storybook reading to younger siblings, relatives, and neighborhood friends. Discusses exploring story structure in the classroom; reading storybooks in school and at home; how retellings improved; and…

Examines children's comprehension of stories and their verbal interactions during storybook readings in groups of various sizes. Finds that reading to children in small groups results in as much interaction as one-to-one readings and leads to greater comprehension than whole-class or even one-to-one readings. (KEH)

Examines how personal versus formal writing tasks affect students' response to and comprehension of literary text. Finds that personal writing tasks enabled students to produce qualitatively more effective responses that tended to be more fluent and constructed with a wider range of response statements. (RS)

Discusses the benefits of reading aloud to preschool and kindergarten children. Notes that active participation accounts for many of these benefits. Suggests several interactive story reading strategies, including a Directed Listening-Thinking Activity and shared book experiences. (MM)

Twelve effective strategies commonly used by deaf adults when reading to deaf children are discussed. Techniques for combining American Sign Language and English exposure are presented, as are story-telling strategies for maintaining attention, using role play, using eye gaze to elicit participation, and relating stories to real world concepts.…

Presents findings from a longitudinal study of reading comprehension development that revealed a negative relationship between the amount of time kindergarten and first-grade teachers spend reading to their students' reading achievement. Results are discussed in terms of a "displacement theory." Students' reading achievement is related to their…

Verbal precocity at 20 months of age did not predict children's later precocious reading. Frequency of story reading in the home at 24 months predicted children's language ability at 2.5 and 4.5 years and, along with literacy instruction, predicted knowledge of print conventions at 4.5. (BC)