The Creative Curriculum comes alive! This videotape-winner of the 1989 Silver Apple Award at the National Educational Film and Video Festival-demonstrates how teachers set the stage for learning by creating a dynamic well-organized environment. It shows children involved in seven of the interest areas in the The Creative Curriculum and explains how they learn in each area. Everyone conducts in-service training workshops for staff and parents or who teaches early childhood education courses will find the video an indispensable tool for explainin appropriate practice.

This hands-on guidebook highlights the research that supports environmental print (EP) instruction in Grades PreK–3 and provides a wealth of activities for jump-starting the literacy process.

This resource will help K–2 teachers revitalize and restructure their classroom literacy instruction based on Marie Clay’s groundbreaking and transformative literacy processing theory. Clay’s theories have created literacy success for more than 2 million struggling first-grade readers in the United States and internationally through the Reading Recovery program. This practical volume gives primary grade teachers specific suggestions for using these principles and includes rich, robust instructional examples to ensure that all children meet new and rigorous standards in all facets of literacy learning. Replete with explicit depictions of classroom practice, the book addresses the following critical aspects of K–2 literacy instruction: Teaching foundational skills in brief skills lessons and as children learn strategic activity to read and write text.Teaching for children’s fast progress in increasingly complex literacy tasks.Understanding the role of complex, frustration, instructional, familiar, and easy texts in reading instruction.Teaching for knowledge building, comprehension, and writing for narrative and informational text. Reader friendly chapters include: Focus questions to target readers’ anticipation of topics discussed.Illustrative examples of powerful teacher-student interaction.Connections between Clay’s comprehensive theory of children’s literacy development, literacy standards, and children’s fast progress to literacy proficiency. “The combination of Marie Clay’s research and theory with the authors' understanding of these principles in today’s classroom is what sets this book apart.” —Lisa Lenhart, director, Center for Literacy Curricular & Instructional Studies, The University of Akron “Gibson and Moss provide a resource for classroom teachers to support the continued learning of all their students, especially those who need an aware and skilled teacher to keep them on track across the primary grades.” —Robert M. Schwartz, professor, Oakland University, and trainer of teacher leaders, Reading Recovery Center for Michigan “This comprehensive and well-designed book will be an excellent professional development resource for classroom teachers, Reading Recovery teachers, literacy coaches/specialists, and site administrators.” —Kathleen Brown, Reading Recovery teacher leader, Long Beach Unified School District, CA “I am eager to use this book with my colleagues as we work to transform early literacy learning in our primary classrooms.” —Terry MacIntyre, Reading Recovery teacher leader, Boulder Valley School District, CO

Teachers interested in transforming their traditional kindergartens into child-centred Whole Language classrooms now have a model for change.

This book presents new findings on the role of active learning in infants’ and young children’s cognitive and linguistic development. Chapters discuss evidence-based models, identify possible neurological mechanisms supporting active learning, pinpoint children’s early understanding of learning, and trace children’s recognition of their own learning. Chapters also address how children shape their lexicon, covering a range of active learning practices including interactions with parents, teachers, and peers; curiosity and exploration during play; seeking information from other people and their surroundings; and asking questions. In addition, processes of selective learning are discussed, from learning new words and trusting others in acquiring information to weighing evidence and accepting ambiguity. Topics featured in this book include: Infants’ active role in language learning. The process of active word learning. Understanding when and how explanation promotes exploration. How conversations with parents can affect children’s word associations. Evidence evaluation for active learning and teaching in early childhood. Bilingual children and their role as language brokers for their parents. Active Learning from Infancy to Childhood is a must-have resource for researchers, clinicians and related professionals, and graduate students in developmental psychology, psycholinguistics, educational psychology, and early childhood education.

Literacy research has continued to develop at a rapid pace in these last five years of the millennium. New ideas about how children learn to read have led to a better understanding of the causes of progress and failure in the mastery of literacy, with repercussions for children's assessment and teacher education. These new discoveries also allow teachers to transcend the old debates in reading instruction (phonics versus whole language) and offer the path to a synthesis. At the same time, research with teachers about their own implementation of methods and the development of their own knowledge about the teaching of literacy has produced a fresh analysis of the practice of literacy teaching. Inspired by these developments, teachers, teacher educators and researchers worked together to produce this volume, which promotes the integration of literacy research and practice.