The professional development CAR Toolkit is focused on the assessment of reading process at the text level, rather than at the word level. Most students in grades 3-6 generally need support in comprehending text, not just decoding words. While the assessment of reading methods in the CAR Toolkit will help teachers pinpoint difficulties at the word…

Filling a crucial gap in the literature, this immensely practical volume presents innovative tools for helping K-3 students significantly increase their ability to make meaning from texts. The focus is on teaching the comprehension processes employed by expert readers, using a carefully sequenced combination of whole-class activities, specially…

This Ready--Set--Read Kit includes an activity guide for families, a 1997-98 early childhood activity calendar, and an early childhood growth wallchart. The activity guide presents activities and ideas that families (adults who have nurturing relationships with a child--a mother, father, grandparent, other relative, or close friend) can use to…

This paper builds upon the "Review of Research and Other Related Evidence" that was commissioned for the government of the United Kingdom's National Literacy Strategy and also upon a subsequent review of international research evidence on children's writing. The paper suggests how "synergy" (combined effect) may be created by…

This issue focuses on the developmental path that children typically take when learning to read. The purpose is to help parents take steps to ensure that their children will make the transition from learning to read to reading to learn by the end of third grade. An introductory section includes two articles: "Parents, Children, and…

Competent readers use strategies automatically; moreover, the use of strategies is a natural part of their reading process. Interested in the effects of the direct teaching of strategies to poor readers, a researcher decided to use a classroom action research approach. She studied reading strategies used by competent readers before, during, and…

This 20th Yearbook of the College Reading Association reflects the theme of "community" again and again, in diverse ways. First in the yearbook are the Presidential Address by Marino C. Alvarez, "Adolescent Literacy: Are We in Contact?" and the three Keynote Addresses: "My Life in Reading" (J. Chall); "A…

The purpose of this article is to explain each of the three phases of reading textbooks and to provide strategies for aiding students to better understand and connect to their textbooks in each of these phases. Each of the three phases is named for its writing counterpart: planning, drafting, and evaluating. This article also states that three…

This paper analyzes: (1) the task of learning to read, in the context of cognitive and linguistic tools a child has at his/her disposal; (2) how these tools change with further development and experience; and (3) how teachers can foster this development and growth. Eight research-based recommendations for classroom teaching are given. (PP)

Constance McCullogh, a former president of the International Reading Association who was rendered illiterate by a brain hemorrhage, describes difficulties she faced in learning to read again, and compares her problems to those faced by beginning readers. Advice to reading teachers is included. (PP)

Reading is a transactional interplay between the reader and the text. Reading for cognitive understanding and for aesthetic enjoyment are very different processes. Schools tend to emphasize the first and neglect the second, although children first experience language in an aesthetic way. Reading instruction should emphasize both types of reading.…

Finds support for the concurrent validity of miscue analysis as a measure of the silent reading processes of elementary school students with respect to the dimensions of syntactic and semantic strength. (FL)