Considers how commercialization has brought popular culture texts and products into children's book publishing, possibly compromising the potential for books that reflectively engage children. Hopes to inform readers of current influences on children's book publishing and to raise questions for discussion and debate among those who are interested…

Discusses how children's everyday literacies can be used in schools to connect popular culture with the language arts curriculum. Defines what the authors mean by the term popular culture, being careful to distinguish it from definitions ascribed to mass media. Shares some practical, classroom-tried ideas for integrating elementary students'…

Summarizes how a group of five elementary and middle school teachers gathered during a summer reading workshop to discuss their views on teaching reading using literature. Concludes with one teacher leading the group to create a poem that captures the essence of the discussion. (SG)

Explains how to help students understand the relationship between figuring out words and the ability to comprehend a text. Describes how to solidify the word-learning/comprehension connection via explaining, modeling, and supporting transfer to independence. Concludes that explaining, modeling, and supporting transfer to independence form the…

Examines the effectiveness of a paired reading intervention using curriculum-based measurement (CBM) probes to document student reading progress. Parents and children used the paired reading method in their homes for 10 minutes, four times a week. Results showed that the children's reading accuracy and rates increased from baseline to follow-up on…

Presents 5 international reports on literacy research from Mexico, Mexico and Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. (SG)

Notes that whole volumes have been written on how to use nonfiction literature to teach reading and writing. Emphasizes three areas where science books especially shine: storytelling, organization, and voice. Discusses advantages of science books. (SG)

Investigates how early lexical processing (word recognition) could influence reading. Finds that less-proficient readers could not finish the task of word recognition within time limits and their accuracy rates were quite low, whereas the proficient readers processed the physical words immediately and translated them into meanings quickly in order…

Discusses many ideas the author has regarding the literature canon including what he thinks should be taught and for what reasons. Makes a case for the classroom contexts that allow students to develop into confident, enthusiastic, and responsible readers of canonical poetry. (SG)

Describes two French teenagers with developmental reading and writing impairments whose performance was compared to that of chronological age and reading age matched non-dyslexic participants. Suggests that a visual attention disorder might be found to be associated with the patterns of developmental surface dyslexia. Shows that phonological and…

Investigates the degree to which native speech perception is superior to non-native speech perception. Shows that language specific speech perception is a linguistic rather than an acoustic phenomenon. Discusses results in terms of early speech perception abilities, experience with oral communication, cognitive ability, alphabetic versus…

This article describes characteristics of five elementary schools that have been constantly successful in teaching children to read. The schools have widely diverse approaches to reading instruction but share key components of phonemic awareness, phonemic decoding, fluency, construction of meaning, vocabulary, spelling, and writing. (Contains…

Investigates whether two different versions of the serial rapid automatized naming (RAN) task, using similar alphanumeric stimuli, would differentially predict performance on word level reading skills. Indicates that the RAN-Alternative measure explained significantly more unique variance in word recognition and orthographic-processing skills than…

Discusses the motivational and other aspects of struggling readers. Notes classroom practices that are barriers to struggling readers in many middle schools. Presents motivation theory as a basis of the authors' proposed engagement model of classroom practice. Proposes six aspects of teaching and classroom context that represent their model of…

Examines sensitivity to the phonological and orthographic composition of multisyllabic words and nonwords amongst a group of English-speaking 11-year-olds. Finds that nonword but not word reading is affected by syllable length, and nonwords are assigned stress patterns which appear to be related to the lexical syllables that were used to construct…