Discusses the impact of increased numbers of Asian and Pacific Islander students in the context of special education. Stresses the importance of special education services that address the diverse cultural and linguistic characteristics of these students, and of parental involvement. (Author/DB)

Summarizes recent studies identifying specific linguistic-cognitive markers for reading disabilities and describes efforts to develop measures of these markers in the areas of phonological awareness, rapid automatic naming, and verbal short-term memory. (Author/DB)

The spelling skills of grade three children who had received whole-language instruction since they began to learn to read were compared with those of grade three children attending a phonics program. Overall, the phonics group produced more accurate word spellings than the whole-language group. In addition, the phonics children's spelling of…

Tested the feasibility of using local culturally relevant rhymes written for Singaporean children with 3- to 6-year olds and evaluated workshops designed to assist teachers in teaching rhymes to young children. Found that children thought the rhymes humorous and became more involved and participative, and that teachers used a wider, more creative…

An experiment was conducted to investigate the influence of three variables (type of augmentative technique used to communicate, disability label, and user competence in communicating with an augmentative technique) on the attitudes of 289 preservice speech pathologists. Findings indicate that user components influenced cognitive evaluations, but…

Describes a class at St. Petersburg Junior College (Florida) that blends classroom, computer lab, and Web-based resources for an English as Second language class. Discusses paradigm shifts in learning processes and teaching methods; designing student activities for the course; and student attitudes. (LRW)

Describes collaborative study done by a prekindergarten teacher, staff developer, and college teacher educator utilizing a highly integrated curriculum whose core was multiple symbol systems. Notes focus on literacy as well as beginnings of writing and reading. Concludes that within the context of high-stakes schooling, the teacher managed to…

Describes the experiences of 20 Hispanic bilingual teachers in California following passage of Proposition 227. Teachers reported that Proposition 227 had created chaos, confusion, and academic setbacks for students and had intensified animosity between bilingual and nonbilingual advocates. Teachers exhibited resistance to the new measures. They…

Shows how the instructional design process can assist in developing a Web-based distance teacher education course, based on the development of a Web-based course for teachers of language minority learners. Topics include audience needs analysis, establishing instructional goals, and formative evaluation and revision. (Author/LRW)

Observed Hindi-speaking Indian caregivers and their children to examine how caregivers use language to create diverse conceptions of personhood. Distributional analyses examined the proportion of person references and class-based patterns of co-occurrence between particular social acts and person references. Discussion explored ways in which…

Presents a study on the implementation of a constructivist approach to using multimedia technology in two advanced language arts classrooms in a public middle school. Because the principal content consisted of written material, the authors examined pre- to posttest improvement in writing ability as measured by trained raters of essays.…

Provides background information on Rene Magritte and his work. Offers an activity in which elementary and middle school students can learn about Magritte's sky and silhouette series of painted wine bottles. Explains that the lesson should be used when students are learning about poetry in language arts classes. (CMK)

This article reports the outcomes of British government-funded research into the provision of speech and language therapy services and identifies 13 key themes that emerge from a review of these findings. Recommendations are made, many of which focus on the need for enhanced collaboration at a range of levels. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

Two experiments were conducted using match-to-sample methodologies in an effort to model lexical classes, which include both arbitrary and perceptual relations between class members. Training in both experiments used a one-to-many mapping procedure with nonsense syllables as samples and eight sets of abstract stimuli as comparisons. These abstract…

While not all gifted children love reading and writing and they do not all have access to books or grow up in literary families the great majority of these children crave the rich and imaginative world that literacy has to offer. Differences in culture, age, and geography influence this love of storytellers, poets, songwriters, and novelists, but…