Jane Hansen

The Effect of Background Knowledge on Young Children's Comprehension of Explicit and Implicit Information:

To investigate the applicability of schema-theoretic notions to young childrens comprehension of textually explicit and inferrable information, slightly above-average second grade readers with strong and weak schemata for knowledge about spiders read a passage about spiders and answered wh-questions tapping both explicitly stated information and knowledge that necessarily had to be inferred from the text. Main effects were found for strength of prior knowledge (p < .01), and question type (p < .01). Simple effects tests indicated a significant prior knowledge effect on the inferrable knowledge (p < .025) but not on explicitly stated information. A follow-up study was conducted to verify the fact that the question type effect was not due to the chance allocation of inherently easier questions to one of the two question types. We found a reliable decrease in question difficulty attributable to cueing prepositional relations explicitly in the text (p < .01). These data were interpreted as supporting and extending the arguments emerging from various “schema theories”.

The Effects of Inference Training and Practice on Young Children's Reading Comprehension.

TWO EXPERIMENTAL METHODS intended to improve inferential reading comprehension were investigated with second-grade children. One method focused on a prereading strategy in which children utilized previous experiences to predict events in the upcoming story. The second method provided practice in answering questions which required inferences between text and prior knowledge. The instruction was applied to ten basal-reader stories. Four dependent measures compared the comprehension ability of the two experimental groups and a control group. On comprehension questions following the instructional stories, the performance of the children in both experimental groups surpassed that of the control children. Standardized test scores and scores on an

The influential interactions of pre-kindergarten writers

This article examines six years of ethnographic research in Robyn Daviss pre-kindergarten classroom in the USA. Using a theoretical framework to embed writing within a social semiotic that is multimodal and has social intent (Street, 2003), the authors show how children used interactions during writing to create various written products. Three themes emerged from their findings: (1) interactions among children challenge their writing identities; (2) interactions among children introduce new possibilities in their writing; and (3) interactions among children with more knowledgeable peers help push writers forward with their writing acquisition. Through these findings, the authors conclude that peer interactions among four- and five-year-old children are influential in their writing processes and products.

Book ReviewsSocial Worlds of Children Learning to Write in an Urban Primary School.DysonAnne Haas, 1993.New York: Teachers College Press (1234 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027). Softcover.230 pp.Language and Literacy in Early Childhood Education.SpodekBernard and SarachoOlivia N., (Eds.), 1993.New York: Teachers College Press (1234 Amsterdam Ave., New York, NY 10027). Softcover.210 pp.

In her excellent book, Anne Dyson writes about the various social worlds children create and/or exist in while they learn to write. She is not the least bit objective about these various classrooms. Some help and others hinder childrens ability to progress as writers. Classrooms with permeable curriculums place children in a better position to use writing to do the social work they strive to do throughout each day. Classrooms with rigid curriculums, on the other hand, force children to divorce their social lives from school in order to complete their prescribed assignments. When children must sit at desks away from the peers they want to interact with and cannot walk to the desks of the friends they need, not only does their writing suffer, but they do not gain an understanding of the contributions they can make to others, nor do they come to value the diverse strengths and stories of their classmates. Dyson believes in the gloriousness of diversity. Her examples of childrens writing and conversation show her love for these young students. She wants classrooms to be places where childrens desire to understand, work with, and be friends with each other receives priority. Writing can be a tool to promote these interactions if the teacher encourages this use, as was the case with Louise, the teacher of the classroom in which Dyson collected most of her data. She focused on six case-study children, four of whom were in Louises classroom. She studied these four children for 2 years. When Dyson began her project she did not realize the importance of the childrens drive to create connections to others would have on their writing. When she realized the uses the children could make of writing to create their social bonds, she focused her data collection on those points. In so doing, she found five classroom conditions that make it possible for students to use writing to gain a position of status and belonging in classrooms where childrens backgrounds are richly diverse. First, the children must know that it is perfectly permissible for them to use shared knowledge in their compositions. They need to be able to write about events and ideas they have in common with particular friends. This creates the bonds of security that allow them to reach out and grow in their classroom.

INTRODUCTION: WRITERS AS EVALUATORS: SELF- EVALUATION ENABLES WRITERS' GROWTH

The impetus for this issue is the general notion that writers who can evaluate themselves fare better than others. They know what they can do well, what their problems are, and what they might do to improve. These abilities are not necessarily self-taught and are also not typically an integral part of writing instruction for students who experience difficulty. In this introductory article, I present three categories of literature related to self-evaluation as experienced by writers who struggle: Affirmation Fosters Self-Evaluation, Self-evaluation Thrives in Cultures of Support, and Self-evaluation Begets Agency. Within these sections I nest the articles of this issue.

What Keeps Writing Alive in Our Classrooms

Experimentation in writing and reading were highly valued by the teachers and students in the classrooms in this article. To not know how to do something is the behavioral norm in these classrooms. The teachers set aside daily time for the students to learn to read from books of their choice and to write on topics of their choice. When the teachers and students discuss their reading and writing, the diversity of their voices shows the value they place on individual differences. Self‐evaluation becomes a skill students use to assess their progress and to set goals for their continued growth.