Describes parent-child activities during storybook reading, suggesting that interactive reading (constructing meaning) is more developmentally enriching than attending to story. Found that Curacaoan mothers were more concerned with child's understanding of story than with constructing meaning. Argues that parents should be trained in dialog that…

Interviews with 16 deaf high school students and 9 teachers found that teachers underestimated the extent of students' independent comprehension of 3 types of text. The text perceived to be most difficult by both teachers and students was the most interesting to students (but not teachers) and fostered use of a greater variety of metacognitive…

This article discusses reading and writing as (1) cognitive processes influenced by social and cultural contexts; (2) sociocognitive processes; (3) a social relationship between authors and readers; and (4) social and cultural activities. Pedagogy and politics in the whole language classroom are also discussed. (JDD)

The relationship of syntactic sensitivities to fluency and understanding are usually neglected when discussing reading fluency. The article describes oral reading and interpretation activities in one seventh grade class undertaken to improve comprehension and fluency. It also discusses evaluation methods, such as portfolios and recordings as…

Describes one teacher's experiences with helping seventh graders become lifelong readers. Discusses the importance of reading aloud to students and how reading, listening, and discussing can help improve writing through the use of reading journals. (MG)

Uses a cognitive processing perspective to revise fifth grade social studies texts, to describe those revisions, and to demonstrate their effects empirically. Finds that students reading the revised text recalled more material and answered more questions correctly than did those reading the original text. Concludes that a text-processing approach…

Focuses on a lesson plan that uses reader-response theory to engage students in a study of a short poem about the holocaust. Reader response theory maintains that each reader brings valuable insight and experience to the interpretation of a work. Includes an annotated bibliography on Holocaust poetry. (MJP)

This study examines the characteristics and quality of simplification in graded readers as compared to those of "normal" authentic English. Two passages from graded readers are compared with the original passages. The comparison uses a computer programme, RANGE (Nation and Heatley, 2003) to analyse the distribution of high and low frequency words…

In this study, the author adapted reciprocal teaching strategies for use with her kindergarten students. Using puppets to help model strategies, she implemented a series of lessons that showed students how to retell, ask questions, and predict what would happen in a story that was read aloud. The purpose was to provide students with comprehension…

In this action research project, undertaken in a Grade 2/3 classroom, I posed the question: How can I encourage the readers in my class to become reflective and critical thinkers as they read? My aim was to support students in becoming reflective about what they read as well as about the strategies they used while reading, and to support the…

The present study investigated early literacy development in minority middle-class families. The subjects were parents and preschool children ages 3-5 that attended a private early childhood center in Irvington, New Jersey. Each family was given one home visit and a library visit. The literacy practices of the families were observed and recorded…

In this article, the author argues that, wherever possible, English teachers should not consider English or English education curriculum as an end in itself but rather a "means" to an end--the building of a critical and compassionate community both within and beyond the classroom. Building such a community involves a re-imagining of the teaching…

"Beit midrash" or "house of study" refers to a place where Jews, traditionally men, gather to study classical texts, often in pairs or "hevruta." In this "Beit midrash" for Teachers, the selection of texts, the language of instruction and the purposes of learning differ from those in a traditional "Beit midrash" where the study of Talmud is…

The study of Jewish traditional texts in a "hevruta" learning setting (two people studying a text together) represents past as well as contemporary modes of Jewish religious and devotional study. More recently, "hevruta" learning has made its way into several contexts of professional development in Jewish education, including inservice settings…

This article looks closely at a subset of books about literacy in and out of school by analyzing images of children learning and struggling to learn to read in realistic fiction. There are several books in which characters wish to learn to read, worry about being poor readers, and work hard to learn to read. These books raise important questions…