Using the Knowledge Base in Reading: Teachers at Work.

This booklet features eight K-6 teachers from the region served by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL) whose work illustrates research-based principles of how children learn to read and write and the environments that support that learning. (These principles were presented as 13 core understandings about learning to read in NWREL's 1997 research synthesis, "Building a Knowledge Base in Reading.") The booklet presents vignettes of diverse teachers and their K-6 classrooms. The teachers in the booklet represent rural, suburban, and urban settings; various student demographics; a range of teaching experience; and various teaching styles--while the teachers were chosen to illustrate the core understandings, they are anything but uniform in their literacy instruction. The teachers in the booklet vary in the ways they organize their classrooms, group students, select and use materials, and assess reading development; some are more systematic in their skill and strategy instruction, while others plan instruction as needed in the context of a specific reading experience. In each vignette in the booklet, selected core understandings have been highlighted, but others are readily apparent as well; vignettes are organized by grade level. In addition to the core understandings, the booklet stresses that learning to read requires access to critical components, among them adequate time, appropriate texts, knowledgeable teachers, and useful demonstrations about how reading and writing work. An appendix lists the International Reading Association/National Council of Teachers of English standards for the English language arts. (NKA)