The researcher/author developed, out of necessity as a teacher, an alternative method to teach reading to a classroom containing students with learning disabilities. A study sought to determine whether the "Achieve" reading curriculum is an effective instructional methodology for increasing the reading achievement of seventh-grade…

This special issue of the newsletter "Council Connections" reports on the First North American Leadership Academy. The Academy's theme was "Strengthening the Operation of Reading Recovery" and its purpose was to develop opportunities for strengthening Reading Recovery in individual schools, sites, school districts and state and…

Scores from elementary school children and adult basic education students on the Adult Informal Reading Test were used to form distribution profiles for a number of tested variables. The profile notion was concluded to be a useful means for displaying the performance trends of published informal reading inventories. (FL)

A study used a Functions of Reading Scale to explore the reading activities of students in grades three, five, and eight in Ireland and the United States. Results showed the patterns of relationships between the variables in the Scale to be consistent across cultures and grade levels. (FL)

Contains an assessment of the inner-city literacy crisis, a critique of rationales for reading failure based on "deficit" and "difference" type ideologies, a call for the study of successful inner-city schools, an evaluation of G. Weber's study of successful inner-city schools, and the development of an urban literacy agenda. (FL)

Indicates that while middle-class preschool children may not have fully developed concepts of linguistic terms used in an instructional setting and may not be able to indicate word-by-word matching of spoken and written words, they do have a functional concept for the purpose of reading and writing. (FL)

Found that mildly learning disabled elementary school students obtained significantly higher reading achievement in a self-contained special learning disabilities classroom than did students in a regular classroom with outside support from a learning specialist and students in a learning center setting. (FL)

Contributors suggest techniques for teaching kindergarten children to read, celebrating Black Heritage Week, developing critical reading and thinking skills, building a classroom library, motivating young readers, and involving parents in reading instruction. (FL)

Compares the reading strategies used by a high achieving English as a second language (ESL) student and a low-achieving native speaker of English during silent reading and concludes that the major differences between the strategies of the two were in the contextual area of reading. (FL)

Describes a summer program for prefreshman science students entering Xavier University, designed to develop their problem-solving and academic abilities by emphasizing the connection between reading comprehension and analytical skills. (MKM)

Discusses research that indicates the value of prereading and postreading in content area reading; explains the encoding specificity principle, which is the basis of methods that present similar cues during prereading and postreading. Describes several instructional applications of this principle. (GT)

Examines a child's stance toward becoming literate in Spanish at home and school. Discusses the kinds of literacy activities he engaged in and the context in which he did so. Points out this child's ability to make connections between various literacy contexts, and suggests ways that teachers can foster similar connections for other children. (SR)

Describes the sophisticated reading strategies of two eight-year-old boys. Notes that the boys were thought to be about average or below average in reading achievement. Concludes that the standardized measures used to judge their reading achievement penalized the boys for their working class backgrounds and for their everyday use of Caribbean…

Describes changes in literacy engagement during Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI), a new approach to teaching reading, writing, and science that emphasizes real-world science observations, student self-direction, strategy instruction, collaborative learning, self-expression, and coherence of literacy learning experiences. Finds that…

Examines the effectiveness of a skill-based individualized reading program on the reading achievement of adults and adolescents of low reading ability. Finds a significant improvement in reading skills. Notes that the outcome was replicated in two separate experiments across two different populations. (RS)