A book on how children learn to read.

While most children learn to read fairly well, there remain many young Americans whose futures are imperiled because they do not read well enough to meet the demands of our competitive, technology-driven society. This book explores the problem within the context of social, historical, cultural, and biological factors. Recommendations address the identification of groups of children at risk, effective instruction for the preschool and early grades, effective approaches to dialects and bilingualism, the importance of these findings for the professional development of teachers, and gaps that remain in our understanding of how children learn to read. Implications for parents, teachers, schools, communities, the media, and government at all levels are discussed. The book examines the epidemiology of reading problems and introduces the concepts used by experts in the field. In a clear and readable narrative, word identification, comprehension, and other processes in normal reading development are discussed. Against the background of normal progress, Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children examines factors that put children at risk of poor reading. It explores in detail how literacy can be fostered from birth through kindergarten and the primary grades, including evaluation of philosophies, systems, and materials commonly used to teach reading.

This edited book focuses on affordances and limitations of e-books for early language and literacy, features and design of e-books for early language and literacy, print versus e-books in early language and literacy development, and uses of and guidelines for how to use e-books in school and home literacy practices. Uniquely, this book includes critical reviews of diverse aspects of e-books (e.g., features) and e-book uses (e.g., independent reading) for early literacy as well as multiple examinations of e-books in home and school contexts using a variety of research methods and/or theoretical frames. The studies of children’s engagement with diverse types of e-books in different social contexts provide readers with a contemporary and comprehensive understanding of this topic. Research has demonstrated that ever-increasing numbers of children use digital devices as part of their daily routine. Yet, despite children’s frequent use of e-books from an early age, there is a limited understanding regarding how those e-books are actually being used at home and school. As more e-books become available, it is important to examine the educational benefits and limitations of different types of e-books for children. So far, studies on the topic have presented inconsistent findings regarding potential benefits and limitations of e-books for early literacy activities (e.g., independent reading, shared reading). The studies in this book aim to fill such gaps in the literature.

This collection of essays explores the cultural significance of children’s reading by analyzing a series of Anglo-American case studies from the eighteenth century to the present. Marked by historical continuity and technological change, children’s reading proves to be a phenomenon with broad influence, one that shapes both the development of individual readers and wider social values. The essays in this volume capture such complexity by invoking the conception of “mediation” to approach children’s reading as a site of interaction among individual people, material texts, and institutional networks. Featuring a range of scholarly perspectives from the disciplines of literature, education, graphic design, and library and information science, this collection uncovers both the intricacies and wider stakes of children’s reading. The books, public programs, and archives that focus explicitly on children’s interests and needs are powerful arenas that give expression to the key ideological investments of a culture.

This report is the third in a series based on findings about young children's early experiences with school from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K). Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, the ECLS-K study selected a nationally representative sample of kindergartners in the fall of 1998 and is following these children through the spring of their fifth-grade year. The study collects information directly from the children, their families, teachers, and schools. This report looks at children's school performance during first grade in terms of their reading and mathematical knowledge and skills by relating them to child, family, and school characteristics. The report finds that some of the differences in children's reading and mathematics knowledge and skills by child, family, and school characteristics that are present as they enter kindergarten persist into the spring of their kindergarten and spring of their first-grade year. For example, poor children consistently score below the national average in both reading and mathematics across the kindergarten year and into the spring of first grade. These findings also suggest differences that are beginning to emerge by children's sex. By spring of first grade, females are more likely to be reading (understanding words in context), whereas, males are more likely be proficient at advanced mathematics (multiplication and division). However, some differences do seem to wane. For example, in both reading and mathematics, Hispanic children's scores tend to move upward toward the national mean over these two school years. The longitudinal nature of the ECLS-K will enable researchers to track these differences in terms of children's third- and fifth-grade reading and mathematics performance. The report also notes that children who bring certain knowledge and skills with them to kindergarten are likely to be at an advantage in classroom learning compared to peers who do not possess such resources. The descriptive analyses of the report show that children who have specific cognitive knowledge and skills, are read to frequently, possess positive approaches to learning, and enjoy very good or excellent general health, perform better in reading and mathematics than those without these resources. (Includes data and standard error tables. Appended is a table of regression coefficients for the relationship between children's resources and skills to their spring kindergarten and spring first-grade reading performance. Contains 18 references.) (HTH)

Parental involvement in children's education is a subject of growing interest and recent legislation in both the UK and USA has given formal recognition of parents’ rights. Learning to read is an obvious area where parents can do a great deal to help, and some schools have had programmes for parental involvement in reading for some time. However recent research has shown the considerable benefit in having carefully structured systems for parental involvement. This book presents a review of past and current good practice in this field. Details of a wide range of schemes developed in local areas are given in a series of short contributed papers, which are grouped into sub sections of Part 2 according to the type of project. Part 3 is essentially a manual of materials and methods. The emphasis throughout the book is on service delivery to all children although there is of course considerable discussion of remedial reading and children with special needs The book should appeal to a wide audience in education, educational administration and educational psychology.

A History of Children's Reading and Literature presents the pattern of educational activity in relation to the methods undertaken in the schools, and the extent to which books are used in the advancement of literacy. This book describes the factors that are contributory or detrimental to the growth of literacy, including educational provision, the availability of school and public libraries, the use of books in schools, and the parallel evolution of recreational literature of all kinds. Organized into 22 chapters, this book starts with an overview of the educational activity during the years of economic depression wherein economic factors resulted in a national state of social unrest that both State and Church came to recognize could be controlled only by the extension of education. This text then describes the successive educational legislation and other factors that contributed to the advancement of public libraries in the last three decades of the 19th century. This book is a valuable resource for teachers, parents, and students.

The volume identifies critical issues and cutting-edge research in assessing children's reading comprehension.