As educators struggle to find ways to engage students in literacy development and content area exploration, performance literacy is emerging as an important pedagogical tool. This article defines performance literacy as the process of teaching students to write and perform stories. The author lists the five major components in the development of…

Three experiments investigated how readers manage their mental representations during narrative comprehension. The first experiment investigated whether readers' access to their mental representations of the main character in a narrative becomes enhanced (producing a "benefit") when the character is rementioned; the first experiment also…

A study examined the effectiveness of social story interventions for three young children (ages 3-6) with autism spectrum disorders. Results confirmed the effectiveness of this intervention for reducing the frequency of target behaviors. Target behaviors remained at a low level even after the social story interventions were discontinued. (Contains…

A critical aspect of the assessment of children's word learning processes is the examination of word knowledge growth over time. The purpose of this study was to examine the types of partial word knowledge (PWK) growth that occurred from 1 exposure to unfamiliar words in text, taking into account the roles of part of speech and individual language…

This small-scale piece of research stemmed from a larger study on oral storytelling and the responses of children to stories told and read to them. In the larger study several children expressed preferences for stories from picture books, as "told" stories were not "real" stories. This concept of "real" stories and…

Although most children seem to love music, our understanding of the role it plays in facilitating speech and language learning is limited, as is research validating its efficacy in the clinical setting. The purpose of this study was to examine how singing affects children's quick incidental learning (QUIL) of novel vocabulary terms. Sixteen…

At-risk 1st graders were randomly assigned to tutoring in more or less decodable texts, and instruction in the same phonics program. The more decodable group (n = 39) read storybooks that were consistent with the phonics program. The less decodable group (n = 40) read storybooks written without phonetic control. During the first 30 lessons,…

These two story-based lesson plans were designed to address the lack of motivation and interest by students in a sixth grade English class in Greece. The lessons appeal to young learners who want to be creative and imaginative by making learning entertaining. The animal stories are authentic texts, not graded readers, with helpful visuals. They…

Everyone knows how important it is to read to young children--but it is the "quality" of shared reading that really affects emergent literacy. How well are adults engaging and teaching children as they read together? How well are children listening and responding? The first and only tool to measure the quality of adult and child interactions…

In this study I investigated the effectiveness of a kindergarten vocabulary intervention, developed based on previous research on characteristics of effective vocabulary intervention through storybook read-alouds, in 5 kindergarten classrooms. Among these classrooms were 3 mainstream, 1 two-way bilingual, and 1 structured immersion classroom. The…

In this article, the author reports on a practical strategy originally developed for use with pupils with Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC). Based on a small-scale research project, the article focuses on the use of Social Stories to promote pro-social behaviour with a group of non-ASC pupils. The topic was chosen for systematic enquiry by the…

The gender issue is relevant to classroom learning in more ways than one. Increasingly in the United States, young boys are saying that school is stupid and they do not like to read. This phenomenon cuts across all demographic groups: it affects affluent white boys in the suburbs no less than it affects black boys in low-income neighborhoods. In…

The current study explored literacy interest or orientation of pre-school children with hearing impairment during mother-child story book interactions. Twelve pre-schoolers with varying types and levels of hearing impairment were observed during mother-child home book reading and toy play. Story books included both narrative and manipulative book…

A study investigated whether classroom reading instruction that focuses students' attention on story characters' motives and feelings improves their narrative comprehension. The subjects for this study were 48 third-grade students from 3 different classrooms in the same school. Two different treatments were used: the External Events (control)…

Designed for teachers in the primary grades, this book provides a number of units outlining possible instructional strategies for teaching folk literature. The book's aim is to help children personally connect with literature so they will continue to love reading throughout their lives. The first chapter offers background on the world of folk…