How Children Learn to Read: Insights from the New Zealand Experience Book

In How Children Learn to Read - Insights from the New Zealand Experience, John Smith and Warwick Elley update and expand their internationally successful book, Learning to Read in New Zealand (1984). This book, like its predecessor, offers a comprehensive discussion of reading instruction and its practice in New Zealand. It introduces the theories and philosophy which underpin the whole language, literature-based approach widely and successfully used by New Zealand teachers, and provides insight into the wider context of international research and the debate on literacy.Essential reading for everyone in teacher education programmes, How Children Learn to Read will support and enrich the work of practising teachers, and clarify for parents and caregivers the issues and debates that surround reading instruction. The research base of its predecessor has been updated with: new research on the benefits of story reading and shared reading; an added section on family literacy; new findings on remedial assistance for the less able reader; international research on the value of book-based reading and an expansion of current debates on reading theory.Technological change only re-emphasizes the role of reading as the basic and universal information-sharing skill, crucial to our children's future. This book is a vital resource for all interested in the understanding and transmission of that skill.Read More