Current research increasingly highlights the role of early literacy in young children's development--and informs practices and policies that promote success among diverse learners. The Handbook of Early Literacy Research presents cutting-edge knowledge on all aspects of literacy learning in the early years. Volume 2 provides additional perspectives on important topics covered in Volume 1 and addresses critical new topics: the transition to school, the teacher-child relationship, sociodramatic play, vocabulary development, neuroimaging work, Vygotskian theory, findings from international studies, and more.

The Handbook of Family Literacy, 2e, provides the most comprehensive, up-to-date coverage of family literacy of any available book. It documents the need for literacy education for children and parents, describes early literacy and math development within the home, analyses interventions in home and center settings, and examines the issues faced by fathers and women with low literacy skills. Cultural issues are examined especially those for Hispanic, African American, American Indian, Alaskan Native, and migrant populations. Noted experts throughout the United States, Canada, England, the Netherlands, Germany, New Zealand, and South Africa analyze the commonalities and differences of family literacy across cultures and families. Key features include the following. Comprehensive – Provides updated information on the relation between early childhood literacy development, parenting education, and intervention services. Research Focus – Provides an extensive review of experimental studies, including national reviews and meta-analyses on family literacy. Practice Focus – Provides a comprehensive treatment of family literacy interventions necessary for program developers, policy makers, and researchers. Diversity Focus – Provides detailed information on cultural and diversity issues for guiding interventions, policy, and research. International Focus – Provides an international perspective on family literacy services that informs program developers, researchers, and policy makers across countries. Evaluation Focus – Provides detailed guidelines for ensuring program quality and fidelity and a valuable new evaluation perspective based on implementation science. This book is essential reading for anyone – researchers, program developers, students, practitioners, and policy makers – who needs to be knowledgeable about intervention issues, family needs, program developments, and research outcomes in family literacy.

(sponsored by the Family School Community Partnership Issues SIG) Promising Practices for Engaging Families in Literacy fulfills the need from parents and teachers to improve home/school assistance in every child’s literacy development. Literacy skills are required and valued in all academic areas and at all levels of education from preschool through adulthood. This volume provides suggestions and support to improve parent/child involvement in literacy activities from preschool through teacher education programs. Research is provided to undergird the documented practices that increase student academic achievement through improved literacy skills across academic areas. Practices include connections between home and school across age groups, developmental needs groups, universities, community groups, and technologies.

By following families over three years the authors have convincingly shown the power of a family literacy program to change lives. At the broadest level their conclusions will come as little surprise to anyone in the literacy field--the children with the greatest need benefited the most, and parents with at least high school education could help their children the most. The real richness of this volume, however lies in the depth of detail. The parents involved in the program told the researchers they were generally paying more attention to printed material, reading more often and wanted to learn how to improve their literacy. They became more sophisticated in gauging their children's literacy skills and more sure of their own abilities to help those children.

About This Book: Joyful Literacy Interventions describes a research-based, comprehensive classroom intervention approach that promises over 90% literacy success for all children by the end of third grade when implemented in its entirety.The stage is set in a playful primary classroom learning environment. While play is critical in early learning classrooms where child development theories must prevail, vulnerable children need more than play. Play is simply not enough! This book is also about explicit skill instruction in preschool, kindergarten and first and second grade-as a top priority. What makes this book unique is that Janet describes how to implement a skill-mastery model invisibly in a play-based environment through games, play, inquiry and targeted small group instruction. Janet's passion and determination to make a difference for disadvantaged children shines through in Joyful Literacy Interventions. Her book is based on the most recent literacy research such as the NELP (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008) report, which is a meta-analysis of 500 exemplary literacy studies conducted in the last decade. This compelling research highlights the factors that have the most lasting effect on future reading success if implemented in the early years. Alphabetic principles, phonological awareness, shared reading and shared writing, rapid automatized naming, and use of children's names as a key instructional strategy are featured prominently.In Joyful Literacy Interventions Janet has merged the recommendations of the NELP Report with her 40 years of experiences as a primary teacher and administrator; her recent PhD in Language, Literacy and Early Learning and the experiences of 200 classroom sites where her approach was field-tested.She has designed a unique assessment and tracking system that facilitates skill development and differentiated instruction in the midst of a playful and inquiry-based learning center classroom. It elegantly provides the teacher with detailed data to inform daily instruction for small "like-need" groups. Vulnerable children get the "catch-up" instruction they require while feeling safe and happy. Janet describes how to joyfully implement play and the essential literacy skills so that vulnerable children will thrive in classroom-based interventions. The book weaves nine essential research-based components into practical classroom applications. Each chapter describes essential skills, concepts and experiences needed for literacy success for all children. Implemented together the result is a holistic classroom experience that promises literacy success for many disadvantaged children.The first seven chapters provide the reader with: Janet's wisdom that evolved over 40 years in her experiences as teacher, principal, superintendent and professor; a synopsis of the latest, persuasive research; key references to other popular authors; teacher implementation stories from Janet's pilot sites; hundreds of practical ideas for the reader to implement; and colored photos throughout the book that illustrate possibilities and results. The chapters' topics address: a dynamic classroom environment; assessment and tracking; the essential literacy skills; learning center design; word recognition; shared reading and writing; and involving families in practice literacy activities at home.Chapter 8 provides a checklist that describes the ideal classroom by listing the research-based criteria and observable indicators in a classroom when full implementation is achieved. Chapter 9 describes a district and a classroom case study from Janet's 200 pilot sites. Joyful Literacy Interventions weaves the essential components together into practical classroom applications that are already proving to be highly effective for disadvantaged children.This book is a "must-read" for advocates of vulnerable children.