Use storybook reading to build the early literacy competencies that young children need to become successful readers and learners. Strategies and sample interactions will help you to strengthen children's knowledge of written language, vocabulary, phonology, the alphabet, narrative discourse, and the world around them. Also included are lists of additional storybooks for use in the classroom. As you develop children's abilities and interests in these areas, you will ease their transition to more advanced levels of reading and learning.

Learn how to make the most of shared reading with this practical guide, filled with strategies for creating an enriching atmosphere and actively engaging children during storybook reading.

Preschool teachers and early childhood professionals know that storybook reading is important, but they may not know how to maximize its benefits for later reading achievement. This indispensable guide presents research-based techniques for using reading aloud to intentionally and systematically build children's knowledge of print. Simple yet powerful strategies are provided for teaching preschoolers about book and print organization, print meaning, letters, and words, all while sharing engaging, commercially available books. Appendices include a detailed book list and 60 reproducibles that feature activities and prompts keyed to each text.

Developmental Education is an approach to education in school that aims at promoting children’s cultural development and their abilities to participate autonomously and well-informed in the cultural practices of their community. From the point of view of Cultural-historical Activity theory (CHAT), a play-based curriculum has been developed over the past decades for primary school, which presents activity contexts for pupils in the classroom that create learning and teaching opportunities for helping pupils with appropriating cultural knowledge, skills, and moral understandings in meaningful ways. The approach is implemented in numerous Dutch primary schools classrooms with the explicit intention to support the learning of both pupils and teachers. The book focuses especially on education of young children (4 – 8 years old) in primary school and presents the underpinning concepts of this approach, and chapters on examples of good practices in a variety of subject matter areas, such as literacy (vocabulary acquisition, reading, writing), mathematics, and arts. Successful implementation of Developmental Education in the classroom strongly depends on dynamic assessment and continuous observations of young pupils’ development. Strategies for implementation of both the teaching practices and assessment strategies are discussed in detail in the book.

Scaffolding Literacy describes an alternative approach to literacy teaching in primary schools based on the principles of explicit teaching regarding how authors use words to convey meaning. The book provides a detailed description of the scaffolding literacy teaching sequence and related strategies developed at the University of Canberra (Australia) over two decades. It explains why the scaffolding literacy approach enables learners to understand the reading, language studies, and writing tasks assigned to them in schools better.

Bernard does an excellent job of not only showing how to practice research, but also provides a detailed discussion of broader historical and philosophical contexts that are important for understanding research.