Peg Griffin – författare

A devastatingly large number of people in America cannot read as well as they need for success in life. With literacy problems plaguing as many as four in ten children in America, this book discusses how best to help children succeed in reading. This book identifies the most important questions and explores the authoritative answers on the topic of how children can grow into readers, including: * What are the key elements all children need in order to become good readers? * What can parents and caregivers provide all children so that they are prepared for reading instruction by the time that they get to school? * What concepts about language and literacy should be included in beginning reading instruction? * How can we prevent reading difficulties starting with infants and into the early grades? * What to ask school boards, principals, elected officials, and other policy makers who make decisions regarding early reading instruction.You'll find out how to help youngsters build word recognition, avoid comprehension problems, and more--with checklists of specific accomplishments to be expected at different ages: for very young children, for kindergarten students, and for first, second, and third grade students. Included are 55 activities to do with children to help them become successful readers, a list of recommended children's books, and a guide to CD-ROMs and websites. Great strides have been made recently toward identifying the best ways to teach children to read. Starting Out Right provides a wealth of knowledge based on a summary of extensive research. It is a "must read" for specialists in primary education as well as parents, pediatricians, child care providers, tutors, literacy advocates, policy makers, and teachers.

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.

In its description of several years of painstaking classroom observations and carefully crafted experimental interventions, the 'construction zone' makes clear the cleavage lines between the everyday requirements of classroom teaching and the practice of experimental psychologists. The best intentions of researchers to improve education are often undermined by such differences. The 'construction zone' is the shared psychological space within which teachers construct environments for their students' intellectual development and students construct deeper understandings of the cultural heritage embodied in the curriculum. The core of the book is a set of analyses of children's developmental changes during classroom lessons and individual tutorials designed to teach basic concepts in such diverse areas as natural science, social studies, and arithmetic. Fusing techniques currently in wide use in microsociology, experimental psychology, and ethnographic studies of the classroom, the authors offer a compelling vision of intellectual development as a process of joint constructive interaction mediated by cultural artifacts. Their approach makes it possible to retain the strength of a developmental perspective which treats intellectual change as a constructive process in the spirit of Piaget, while making it clear that developmental change is simultaneously a social process of cultural transformation as emphasized by Vygotsky and his students.

Basic reading proficiency is key to success in all content areas, but attending to students’ literacy development remains a challenge for many teachers, especially after the primary grades. Knowledge to Support the Teaching of Reading presents recommendations for the essential knowledge about the development, acquisition, and teaching of language and literacy skills that teachers need to master and use. This important book is one result of an initiative of the National Academy of Education's Committee on Teacher Education, whose members have been charged with the task of creating a core knowledge base for teacher education.