Language Arts - Volume 80, Issue 4, 2003

Shares the author's minute-by-minute decisions in working with an alienated student whose beliefs about reading created a wall of resistance to learning. Notes the student's beliefs about his learning potential and his lack of strategies were at the root of his reading problems. Concludes that before alienated students can overcome the restrictive situations imposed by the present educational system,educators must learn to see struggling students in a new way.

Questions students on what gets in the way of reading for them and what advice they would give educators to help overcome those obstacles. Concludes that as a result of their words, educators now look at each classroom for common elements that support all readers: diverse resources, respected adults as readers, choice, time for reading, multiple levels of support, and demonstrations of reading in action.

Describes one rural school's development of a literacy program in which family members collaborate with educators to provide literature-based experiences and tutoring for struggling readers. Concludes that family literacy programs are more successful when they involve family members in working with children as they learn the literary strategies to use in school.

Reports on the authors’ revisiting of the reading process using proficient adult readers (advanced graduate students in a school of education) as their informants. Begins with a brief overview of the current debate concerning the nature of reading and explains how they went about investigating the issue. Discusses what they learned from their investigation and addresses what this means for classroom reading istruction.

Examines the interactions that take place as nine exemplary teachers from New Zealand provide support for struggling writers in ways that inadvertently often turn out to be less effective than they hoped. Discusses four ways to produce unintended outcomes.Illustrates that even for exceptional teachers of writing, conducting effective conferences with struggling writers is a difficult and thought-provoking task.

Considers if a spelling program that is based on explicitly teaching words from children’s own writing makes a difference in their conventional use of these words in future writing.Concludes that the spelling list they generated from student writings were not much better at predicting the words students would need fortheir journal writing than prepackaged lists used in their original study.

Presents annotations of 30 titles selected for the 2002 Notable Children's Books in the Language Arts. Notes that the works share one or more of the following characteristics: deals explicitly with language, such as play on words, word origins, or the history of language; demonstrates uniqueness in the usage of language or style; or invites child response or participation.

Introduces “Language Arts” readers to a remarkable and inspirational woman whose contributions over more than four decades added immeasurably to the understandings of children’s oral language, critical reading, and writing. Lists multiple ways that Martha L. King’s impact on the field of language arts is reflected.