The purpose of this book is to consider early literacy education and whole language from the perspective of constructivist theory (which states that human beings acquire knowledge by building it from the inside in interaction with the environment) and research. More specifically, the book intends to show that the whole language movement is part of…

Serving as a guide for teachers interested in implementing a whole language philosophy within their classrooms and as a resource for teachers who have whole language classrooms, this annotated bibliography presents thorough annotations of 12 selected texts published between 1979 and 1992 encouragement and support for the whole language philosophy.…

Emergent and beginning readers demonstrate many predictable behaviors in the kindergarten classroom, yet every child is making sense out of print in his or her own way. The job of the kindergarten teacher is to help each child to continue developing as a reader and writer. Reading and writing materials are accessible and usable throughout a…

A practicum developed and implemented an integrated reading program to raise reading vocabulary and comprehension scores and reading attitudes in a fourth-grade classroom. A classroom of 23 students was used to implement the program. A standard diagnostic test was used to record pre- and post-test scores in vocabulary and comprehension, and a…

Middle school students need to attain well in the affective dimension in reading. Affective objectives emphasize, among other things, students achieving quality attitudes toward reading. Quality literature might well assist the emerging adolescent to enjoy and grow in reading skills. Learners should have ample opportunities to choose reading…

A 28-year veteran elementary school teacher helps her students ask "real" questions (questions in which the students have a personal stake or "ownership") by forming small groups of students and then letting them ask each other their own questions. Many times "good" questions are seen as the property of the teacher or the textbook. Real questions…

This book summarizes approximately 600 reports of reading research identified between July 1, 1989 and June 30, 1990. The research studies in the book are categorized into six areas: (1) summaries of reading research; (2) teacher preparation and practice; (3) sociology of reading; (4) physiology and psychology of reading; (5) the teaching of…

To provide a Louisiana State reading improvement program with information that could improve instructional efficiency, a study was conducted to determine the relationship between student time on task and eight broad categories of classroom activities used by teachers during reading and language arts instruction. The eight activities studied were…

A study examined the questioning behavior of teachers following the reading of a basal reader story. The four teachers who served as subjects were chosen from a pool of 18 fourth grade teachers, and were selected because their classes produced the two highest and two lowest mean scores on a standardized reading comprehension measure. Each…

The lack of systematic instruction in understanding and answering questions prompted the development of a taxonomy of 300 American history questions sampled from four current and commonly used intermediate grade level history textbooks. Each category of the classification includes a description of the information the question type provides the…

A contract deliverable on the NIE Communication Skills Project, this report consists of three separate documents describing the instructional implications of the analytic and empirical work carried out for the "Classroom Instruction in Reading Comprehension" part of the project: (1) Guidelines for Phrasal Segmentation; (2) Parsing Tasks…

The report discusses the nature and effectiveness, with mildly handicapped students, of the heuristic approach, an alternative to the behavioral technique that promotes opportunities for the child to explore materials and take an active role in problem solving. Theoretical support for the approach is cited for use with learning disabled and mildly…

Given the complexity of classroom reading observations, maintenance of measurement reliability is a concern to researchers. Sources of variation contributing to the unreliability of many measurements may be either (1) lasting and specific, (2) lasting and general, (3) temporary and specific, or (4) temporary and general. Lasting-specific sources…

Traditional reading placement tests, determining the level at which students can read without teacher mediation, frequently lead to student underplacement. Diagnostic teaching practices, however, can be used to determine students' emergent reading level, the reading level that can be achieved through instruction. After preteaching part of a…

This study investigated whether there were significant differences in the acquisition of oral language and reading skills among limited-English-speaking, Hispanic elementary school students receiving instruction through three different bilingual reading approaches, and what other variables might be important. The three reading approaches were: (1)…