In What's a Schwa Sound Anyway? Sandra Wilde answers many questions related to phonics and its relationship to learning to read and spell.

In What's a Schwa Sound Anyway? Sandra Wilde answers many questions related to phonics and its relationship to learning to read and spell.

It is clear that a proper understanding of what academic English is and how to use it is crucial for success in college, and yet students face multiple obstacles in acquiring this new 'code', not least that their professors often cannot agree among themselves on a definition and a set of rules. Understanding Language Use in the Classroom aims to bring the latest findings in linguistics research on academic English to educators from a range of disciplines, and to help them help their students learn and achieve. In this expanded edition of the original text, college educators will find PowerPoint presentations and instructor materials to enhance the topics covered in the text. Using these additional resources in the classroom will help educators to engage their students with this crucial, but frequently neglected, area of their college education; and to inform students about the unexamined linguistic assumptions we all hold, and that hold us back. You can find additional materials on the Resources tab of our website.

This four-volume collection reprints key debates about exactly what it means to be literate and how literacy can best be taught. Rather than centering on the emotional reaction of mass media debates, this set focuses on research findings into processes and pedagogy. The themes covered include Literacy : its nature and its teaching, Reading - processes and teaching, Writing - processes and teaching and New Literacies - the impact of technologies.

Teaching the Dimensions of Literacy provides both the conceptual knowledge to support teachers' instructional decisions in the reading/literacy classroom and a multitude of instructional strategy lessons for classroom use with both monolingual and bilingual students. It proposes that teachers need to help children become code breakers (the linguistic dimension), meaning makers (the cognitive dimension), text users and critics (the sociocultural dimension), and scientists (the developmental dimension). Acknowledging and addressing all four dimensions, this text links literacy theory, literacy research, and literacy practice in a useable way. Covering both reading and writing, it features clear, concise, and useable reading and writing strategy lessons and ways to modify them for different types of students. Changes in the Second Edition: Entirely reorganized, the text is more user friendly, builds a stronger link between theory and practice, and makes it is easier for teachers to locate appropriate strategy lessons to use with their students. Academic literacy is addressed more fully.

"Now I have the tools with [this] book to make [my students] more confident and love the language."--Keith Bauman, honors English teacher, The Villages Charter High School, The Villages, Florida.

Sound Systems features separate sections on phonics instruction in pre-K, K, first-, and second-grade classrooms, detailing how instructional needs in phonics change over time as students acquire new skills throughout the primary years."--Jacket.