Building on the work of an earlier article ["The Word Writing CAFE: Assessing Student Writing for Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency," Dorothy J. Leal, "Reading Teacher," 59 (4) Dec 2005 (EJ738016)], these authors investigated the use of a simple assessment tool with a different audience to yield similar useful results. (Contains 3 figures and 4…

This study investigated relationships between teacher talk exposure in preschool and school and children's second language vocabulary acquisition. Teacher talk exposure and vocabulary acquisition in Turkish-speaking children learning Norwegian and attending various classrooms were assessed yearly from when the children were in their next-to-last…

Instruction in English as a foreign language at an early age is becoming more common worldwide even though the effects of this early instruction are not yet known. This study investigated the English and Chinese language performance of students enrolled in early English immersion in a Chinese primary school. In addition, factors that could predict…

Favorite science topics like seeds and plants, evaporation, light and shadow, and animal observation are the subjects of the eight windowsill science centers included in this book. Each of the science centers includes a discussion of the process skills that students will use, several hands-on activities, explanation of key concepts and vocabulary,…

A study examined teaching methods for vocabulary at the first grade level. The study compared teaching vocabulary in context and teaching vocabulary in isolation. Subjects were 32 culturally diverse first-grade students from varying socio-economic backgrounds. The sample consisted of 14 boys and 18 girls, heterogeneously grouped. Two teacher-made…

Basing skills instruction on the multitude of books available to children, this book connects all the necessary reading skills to literature which will stimulate and motivate students in grades 3-6. Teachers can use the book as a blueprint for reading instruction or as a stepping-off point for a creative literature-based program. Part I of the…

School administrators should realize that independent reading is an important and integral part of the language arts program, that it takes into consideration important skills and strategies, and that it requires risk-taking in a supportive environment. Principals can provide such support by working cooperatively with teachers during every phase…

In this volume, five working papers are presented. "Minimal Signs and Grammar" (Lars Hellan) proposes that a significant part of the "production" of grammar is incremental, building larger and larger constructs, with lexical objects called minimal signs as the first steps. It also suggests that the basic lexical information in…

Developed by educators from the Emily Griffith Opportunity School, this teacher's guide presents a course in health care vocabulary for secretaries, medical records personnel, laboratory assistants, shipping personnel, and patient relations personnel in health care facilities. The course, which should require 10-14 hours of instruction, contains…

This set of learning modules was developed during a project to deliver workplace literacy instruction to individuals employed in the more than 50 businesses related to the activities of the Port of Baltimore. It is intended to help employees of port businesses improve their spelling and vocabulary. The first module is a preassessment designed to…

Presenting over 200 ready-to-use word games, this book introduces secondary English students of all ability levels to the joy of word play while they practice and review a wide variety of skills, including vocabulary, punctuation, word origins, spelling and pronunciation, grammar and usage, and literary devices. Many of the 5- to 15-minute word…

It is argued that many teachers of English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), in attempting to help students deal with the complex task of developing cohesion in their writing, focus on use of functional connectives such as conjunctions while overlooking use of content lexical ties (such as synonymy and hyponymy) despite their usefulness in…

This book is about teaching beginning reading and writing. It is based on the belief that children can be taught to be more observant and conscious of the patterns at work as people communicate--particularly through reading and writing--and that teachers can use what children are able to do and what they are able to see to bring them rapidly and…

In response to a directive to devise strategies to increase student performance in vocabulary development skills, as measured by standardized tests, this paper suggests some of the following strategies: (1) teach word origins and structural analysis; (2) use semantic mapping/webbing; (3) show students how to attack analogies; (4) read aloud; (5)…

A study compared the number of word definitions retained by students who looked up words and wrote down definitions to the number of words retained by students who had the stories and definitions read aloud to them. Subjects, 20 boys and 20 girls in a Florida school, reading on the fifth grade level, were randomly divided into control and…