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This paper reports on a study of the teacher education practices and student characteristics that contribute to successful teachers of minority children, particularly African-American, whose background differs from their own. The study was conducted over two years on cohorts of students from a reflective teacher education program. First year results indicated that student teachers and first-year teachers experienced difficulties but persisted in teaching in ways consistent with the goals and models of the teacher education program. Both cohorts reported that a major hurdle was coming to grips with their students' home life; they were unprepared for the conditions of their students' lives and behaviors. Difficulties for some students resulted from incongruence of their teaching models and those of their cooperating teachers. Isolation was also a frequent complaint of these first-year teachers who suddenly found themselves in minority status. Student teachers and first-year teachers reported similar experiences in the second year of the study. Findings indicated that teachers and student teachers had problems relating to children's lives outside of school and that only one teacher experienced a school climate that gave her needed information and support. (Contains 16 references.) (ND)

A battery of four reading readiness assessment tasks was administered to 267 first grade students to determine if the tasks predicted reading achievement as well as the Metropolitan Readiness Test (MRT). The four tasks, which were the best predictors in a previous study of seven readiness tasks, were the aural word boundaries task, the "rye-rhinoceros" task of distinguishing between words of different length beginning with the same letter, the aural consonant cloze task, and the metalinguistic interview. Subjects were tested with the Written Language Awareness Test, the California Short Form Intelligence Test, and the MRT during the first two months of school. Reading achievement was measured at the end of the school year. The results indicated that the Written Language Awareness test functioned as a good predictor of reading achievement and provided additional information not accounted for on the MRT, the traditional readiness measure. (RL)

A project to design and implement a print rich classroom environment where all children could learn to read naturally was carried out as a result of federal funding under a Pre-elementary Right-to-Read grant. The project was designed to translate into practice theory-based propositions about environmental conditions that facilitate literacy acquisition. To discover and document the specific aspects of those classrooms with a successfully implemented program, classrooms were observed and written descriptions, slides, and videotapes were used to document incidences of print use. The following categories emerged: (1) type of language used, (2) location of print in the room, (3) availability of print to the child, (4) written language function, and (5) time frame of the print-related activity. The data were then used to examine differences between classrooms with and without successful programs, which led to the identification of multiple and varied stimuli for reading and writing, integrative print, continuing involvement, and child centered teachers as characteristics of an effective classroom environment. (HTH)

This study investigated kindergarten, first, and second grade children's ability to make linguistic judgments about sentneces that were either correct or disrupted along semantic or grammatical lines. Sentences on the judgment task were created according to clearly specified rules utilizing grammatical features that could be transformed into predetermined ungrammatical forms. Children listened to sentences said by a puppet and judged whether the puppet said the sentences the right way or the wrong way. The data were analyzed for developmental trends and the effects of different aspects of disruption on judgments. The relationship of performance on each type of sentence to reading achievement was also investigated for first and second graders. The results indicate that the ability to make judgments about the acceptability of sentences is developmental in nature. The type of disruption has an effect on performance. Performance on all three sentence types is related to reading achievement at first grade, but only performance on grammatically disrupted sentences remains related at second grade. The results are interpreted to indicate that performance on correct and semantically disrupted sentences reflects a linguistic maturity related to reading achievement at first grade. (Author)