Your all-in-one guide to selecting the very best early literacy materials! Learning to read and write is too important to be left to chance, so it′s absolutely critical that the early literacy curriculum and literature you use in PreK and kindergarten environments reflect the very best research and instructional practices. But, with the proliferation of new products, what′s the best way to start? What criteria should the curriculum meet? Which research-based best practices should be represented? Early Literacy Materials Selector (ELMS)—the first dedicated evaluation tool for early childhood literacy materials—provides all the answers. Step by step, this one-of-a-kind toolkit will help you: Recognize the characteristics of high-quality literacy materials Work in teams or individually to evaluate your resources Understand the importance of the research base Establish a baseline against which new literacy materials can be compared All in all, there′s no better resource to ensure we put our youngest students on the right path to school readiness and success. "Teachers, administrators, and curriculum directors will appreciate the clear guidance for conducting a systematic review of core program materials. A highly effective tool for examining the quality of early literacy materials, ELMS is the first of its kind, and will be a welcome resource." —Susan B. Neuman, Professor University of Michigan "A much needed resource for considering features of curriculum materials in a systematic way. I know of no other tool like it for early childhood materials." —Judith A. Schickedanz Boston University

Before children are readers and writers, they are speakers and listeners. This book provides creative, hands-on strategies for developing preschoolers' speaking, listening, and oral comprehension skills, within a literacy-rich classroom environment. Each chapter features helpful classroom vignettes; a section called Preschool in Practice, with step-by-step lesson ideas; and Ideas for Discussion, Reflection, and Action. The book addresses the needs of English language learners and describes ways to support students' literacy development at home. The final chapter pulls it all together through a portrait of an exemplary day of preschool teaching and learning. Reproducible forms and checklists can be downloaded and printed in a convenient 8 1/2" x 11" size.

Encyclopedia of Human Services and Diversity is the first encyclopedia to reflect the changes in the mission of human services professionals as they face today’s increasingly diverse service population. Diversity encompasses a broad range of human differences, including differences in ability and disability, age, education level, ethnicity, gender, geographic origin, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class, and values. Understanding the needs and problems of Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, the deaf, the blind, the LGBT community, and many other groups demands an up-to-date and cutting-edge reference. This three-volume encyclopedia provides human services students, professors, librarians, and practitioners the reference information they need to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse population. Features: 600 signed entries are organized A-to-Z across three volumes. Entries, authored by key figures in the field, conclude with cross references and further readings. A Reader’s Guide groups related articles within broad, thematic areas, such as aging, community mental health, family and child services, substance abuse, etc. A detailed index, the Reader’s Guide, and cross references combine for search-and-browse in the electronic version. A helpful Resource Guide guides students to classic books, journals, and web sites, and a glossary assists them with the terminology of the field. Available in both print and electronic formats, Encyclopedia of Human Services and Diversity is an ideal reference for students, practitioners, faculty and librarians.

A devastatingly large number of people in America cannot read as well as they need for success in life. With literacy problems plaguing as many as four in ten children in America, this book discusses how best to help children succeed in reading. This book identifies the most important questions and explores the authoritative answers on the topic of how children can grow into readers, including: What are the key elements all children need in order to become good readers? What can parents and caregivers provide all children so that they are prepared for reading instruction by the time that they get to school? What concepts about language and literacy should be included in beginning reading instruction? How can we prevent reading difficulties starting with infants and into the early grades? What to ask school boards, principals, elected officials, and other policy makers who make decisions regarding early reading instruction. You'll find out how to help youngsters build word recognition, avoid comprehension problems, and moreâ€"with checklists of specific accomplishments to be expected at different ages: for very young children, for kindergarten students, and for first, second, and third grade students. Included are 55 activities to do with children to help them become successful readers, a list of recommended children's books, and a guide to CD-ROMs and websites. Great strides have been made recently toward identifying the best ways to teach children to read. Starting Out Right provides a wealth of knowledge based on a summary of extensive research. It is a "must read" for specialists in primary education as well as parents, pediatricians, child care providers, tutors, literacy advocates, policy makers, and teachers.

Formation of Character is the fifth volume of Charlotte Mason's Homeschooling series. The chapters stand alone and are valuable to parents of children of all ages. Part I includes case studies of children (and adults) who cured themselves of bad habits. Part II is a series of reflections on subjects including both schooling and vacations (or "stay-cations" as we now call them). Part III covers various aspects of home schooling, with a special section detailing the things that Charlotte Mason thought were important to teach to girls in particular. Part IV consists of examples of how education affected outcome of character in famous writers of her day. Charlotte Mason was a late nineteenth-century British educator whose ideas were far ahead of her time. She believed that children are born persons worthy of respect, rather than blank slates, and that it was better to feed their growing minds with living literature and vital ideas and knowledge, rather than dry facts and knowledge filtered and pre-digested by the teacher. Her method of education, still used by some private schools and many homeschooling families, is gentle and flexible, especially with younger children, and includes first-hand exposure to great and noble ideas through books in each school subject, conveying wonder and arousing curiosity, and through reflection upon great art, music, and poetry; nature observation as the primary means of early science teaching; use of manipulatives and real-life application to understand mathematical concepts and learning to reason, rather than rote memorization and working endless sums; and an emphasis on character and on cultivating and maintaining good personal habits. Schooling is teacher-directed, not child-led, but school time should be short enough to allow students free time to play and to pursue their own worthy interests such as handicrafts. Traditional Charlotte Mason schooling is firmly based on Christianity, although the method is also used successfully by s

Summary Elm is more than just a cutting-edge programming language, it’s a chance to upgrade the way you think about building web applications. Once you get comfortable with Elm’s refreshingly different approach to application development, you’ll be working with a clean syntax, dependable libraries, and a delightful compiler that essentially eliminates runtime exceptions. Elm compiles to JavaScript, so your code runs in any browser, and Elm’s best-in-class rendering speed will knock your socks off. Let’s get started! About the technology Simply put, the Elm programming language transforms the way you think about frontend web development. Elm’s legendary compiler is an incredible assistant, giving you the precise and user-friendly support you need to work efficiently. Elm applications have small bundle sizes that run faster than JavaScript frameworks and are famously easy to maintain as they grow. The catch? Elm isn’t JavaScript, so you’ll have some new skills to learn. About the book Elm in Action teaches you the Elm language along with a new approach to coding frontend applications. Chapter by chapter, you’ll create a full-featured photo-browsing app, learning as you go about Elm’s modular architecture, Elm testing, and how to work seamlessly with your favorite JavaScript libraries. You’ll especially appreciate author and Elm core team member Richard Feldman’s unique insights, based on his thousands of hours writing production code in Elm. When you’re done, you’ll have a toolbox of new development skills and a stunning web app for your portfolio. What's inside Scalable design for production web applications Single-page applications in Elm Data modeling in Elm Accessing JavaScript from Elm About the reader For web developers with no prior experience in Elm or functional programming. About the author Richard Feldman is a software engineer at NoRedInk and a well-known member of the Elm community. Table of Contents PART 1 - GETTING STARTED 1. Welcome to Elm 2. Your first Elm application 3. Compiler as assistant PART 2 - PRODUCTION-GRADE ELM 4. Talking to servers 5. Talking to JavaScript 6. Testing PART 3 - BUILDING BIGGER 7. Data modeling 8. Single-page applications

An anthology of poems focusing on unique places of historical, environmental, and/or cultural interest in the United States as expressed by poets of diverse heritage and reflected in illustrations featuring people of all ages and backgrounds.

In 1500, as many as 99 out of 100 English women may have been illiterate, and girls of all social backgrounds were the objects of purposeful efforts to restrict their access to full literacy. Three centuries later, more than half of all English and Anglo-American women could read, and the female reader was emerging as a cultural ideal and a market force. While scholars have written extensively about women's reading in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and about women's writing in the early modern period, they have not attended sufficiently to the critical transformation that took place as female readers and their reading assumed significant cultural and economic power. Reading Women brings into conversation the latest scholarship by early modernists and early Americanists on the role of gender in the production and consumption of texts during this expansion of female readership. Drawing together historians and literary scholars, the essays share a concern with local specificity and material culture. Removing women from the historically inaccurate frame of exclusively solitary, silent reading, the authors collectively return their subjects to the activities that so often coincided with reading: shopping, sewing, talking, writing, performing, and collecting. With chapters on samplers, storytelling, testimony, and translation, the volume expands notions of reading and literacy, and it insists upon a rich and varied narrative that crosses disciplinary boundaries and national borders.