Wordless picturebooks provide opportunities for both families and teachers to engage with narrative texts beyond the confines of a particular language. In this ethnographic study, the researchers examined how one multilingual family interacted with a wordless picturebook across time. They observed shifts in who engaged with the reading; evidence of sense‐making as the mother, older sister, and younger sister engaged with the book; scaffolding the mother and older sister provided for the younger sister as her telling of the story became more sophisticated; and intimacy and humor. These observations may have implications for classroom teachers who are interested in using wordless picturebooks to support culturally and linguistically diverse learners. The authors conclude with suggestions for incorporating wordless picturebooks into classroom practice in ways that may be welcoming and productive for students from diverse backgrounds.

Informational reading instruction plays an important role in early literacy but has traditionally received less emphasis than literary text in elementary classrooms. This mixed‐methods study illuminates trends from observed reading instruction of 77 first‐year elementary teachers, drawing on data from 761 lesson segments scored with the Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observations, a validated observation protocol. In descriptive analyses, we report on the prevalence of informational lessons across grade levels. Then, we integrate quantitative and qualitative data to describe the quality of informational reading instruction among first‐year teachers. Findings suggest a higher percentage of informational reading lesson segments in early elementary than has been shared in previous studies: 27% of observed reading instruction in grade 1 and 41% of observed reading instruction in grade 2. Quality of informational reading lesson segments varied within and among elements of instruction, with the majority of segments rated as low scoring for strategy use. We use qualitative case sampling to illustrate the characteristics of informational reading instruction across a range of score points. Analysis of lesson segments reveals a range of practices in text‐based instruction, strategy instruction, and representations of content, with the highest quality instruction showing a combination of all three. This study contributes to our understanding of the current landscape of informational reading instruction among first‐year teachers, identifies specific instructional practices that could be the focus of improvement efforts, and weighs in on the debate about strategy instruction versus content instruction.

This paper describes a method of estimating a person's reading rate from a small sample of his speech (in other words, a short sentence). Reading rate was obtained by measuring the speaking portion of a considerable amount of reading, .and dividing it by the number of phonemes in the material (this is called the grand mean). Out of 108 sentences read by four talkers, 58 having 15 words or less were selected. The ratio of unstressed to stressed syllables, and the number of syllables per occurrence of terminal lengthening were calculated for each of the 58 sentences. Sentences with both of these values in the middle range were considered to have an average phoneme duration close to the grand mean. The prediction was compared to actual readings by four talkers, with 83 percent agreement. The Summary section contains instructions for applying our method of estimating a person's reading rate. Those who are interested should read the Summary section and the Appendix first.

Two experiments were performed to measure the difference limen (DL) for fundamental frequency using sentence level speech stimuli. In experiment I a male reader recorded five sentences. They were analyzed and synthesized using a linear prediction vocoding system. Part of each sentence was varied in 5-Hz steps above and below the original contour. Sentences (original contour and one of the changed contours) were presented to listeners using the method of constant stimuli. DL's ranged from less than 5 to 15 Hz depending on the sentence. There was no significant difference between DL's as a function of direction of change (up or down from original). Experiment II was an attempt to determine if the variability in DL due to sentences was a function of differences in placement of the frequency change. The changes in fundamental frequency began and ended at voiceless portions in all sentences. The median DL for the speaker also used in experiment I was 12 Hz. No significant differences as a function of sentences were found. For another speaker the DL's were over 15 Hz.

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