Presents a developmental framework for interpreting and understanding how new digital technologies have been integrated into literacy instruction and research and how they might be integrated in the future. Argues that assimilation and accommodation define a developmental reality that helps explain a variety of issues pertaining to new…

Investigates effects of the Success for All (SFA) program on elementary school students' reading achievement in 4 cities. Finds greater achievement for students in SFA classes at 3 sites, especially for students achieving below the 25th percentile, relative to students in control classrooms, but effects were not as strong and consistent as in the…

Explores the effects of Urdu on the acquisition of English literacy skills by comparing the reading, memory and phonological processing skills of bilingual Urdu-English and monolingual English children (7-8 years old). Demonstrates that bilingual reading development can have a positive effect on the acquisition of literacy skills, such as…

Examines comprehension of causal text sequences (in simulation) using construction-integration analysis. States that 16 preliminary simulations, applied to 2 text frames each, influenced decisions concerning 4 simulation choice points. Reveals good qualitative fit between the construction-integration activation of the probe questions and their…

Examines the influence of language proficiency and comprehension skill on situation-model construction during narrative comprehension. Studies 12 college students who thought aloud reading French and English stories for comprehension and who performed a verb-clustering task after reading each text. Finds that the students generated more…

Reports on the results of four experiments that show that people can recognize ironic meanings that were not intended, and that processing unintended irony can be done easily precisely because speakers' utterances, unbeknownst to them, create ironic situations. Discusses implications for psycholinguistic theories of irony comprehension and for…

Examines relationships between phonological skills and reading in 143 Arab children in Arab villages of central Israel. Finds that a word recognition test was highly correlated with phonological skills, semantic processing, syntactic knowledge, and short-term memory, and that poor readers significantly lagged in skill development. Discusses…

Investigates the internalization process of reading among 32 first graders. Finds that more of the experimental group students (who were allowed to "mumble read" during instructional and silent reading time) were reading silently as well as having higher reading placements than the control group (whose vocalizations were suppressed). (RS)

Compares fifth-grade teachers' views of teaching a content area literacy lesson with those of literacy professors. Finds that the majority of teachers followed the text closely and took a dominant role as transmitter of knowledge, while professors were not constrained by the text and emphasized a constructivist view of learning. Discusses…

Finds that teaching 13-year-old poor readers to use effective reading strategies convinced them that reading successes and failures were attributable to use of effective or ineffective strategies; improved their comprehension performance and increased use of reading strategies; and reduced their perceptions of learned helplessness. (RS)

Compares responses of two highly reluctant learning-disabled readers before and after they were helped to visualize story situations through visual art. Shows that visual art helped the readers to begin enjoying reading, and to begin evoking and manipulating story worlds in their minds. Notes that the students began to participate in the classroom…

Examines (in a pilot study and the first two phases of a longitudinal study) preventing the emergence of written language difficulties by addressing the ability of preschoolers to make phonological judgments. Notes that children identified as having poor rhyme awareness were given one-to-one training, and that students were given training in…

Presents results from an informal survey of 50 individuals of all ages about the Harry Potter phenomenon. Offers four suggestions for the English language arts classroom about a place "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" might have in a school's curriculum, dealing with transforming text, understanding genre, responding to texts with personal…

Finds that grade two students' comprehension scores did not differ significantly between oral reading and silent reading, while grade three and four students' comprehension scores were significantly higher after oral reading. Argues that these findings are consistent with a Vygotskian model of the transition from oral to silent reading. (SR)

Finds that children in a culturally diverse first-grade classroom sorted 15 picture books into piles of books having similar characteristics, classifying books by topic, genre, author, culture, emotional response, and physical property of the book. Discusses how some aspects of children's classification systems were similar to the teacher's way of…