One duck is stuck in the muck. Can two fish, tails going swish, help? What about three moose, munching on spruce? Will four crickets, chirping in the thickets, be able to pull the unlucky duck out of the muck? With bright, spirited illustrations by Jane Chapman, this counting tale by Phyllis Root is a feast of sounds and numbers that will have young listeners scrambling to join the slippy, sloppy fun. Exuberant rhythms and vibrant illustrations in a one-of-a-kind counting book!
Reading Level Automatic: Grade K-3
Reading Level Manual: Grade 1

Originating in a recent CIERA conference held at the University of Michigan, this book brings together the nation's most distinguished researchers to examine how readers understand text and how comprehension is assessed. The first part provides both national and historical contexts for the study of reading comprehension. The second part examines how vocabulary, motivation, and expertise influence comprehension, and it includes analyses of the developmental course and correlates of comprehension. Chapters in the third part consider how schools focus on comprehension for instruction and assessment. The fourth part includes chapters on large-scale assessment that analyze how test formats and psychometric characteristics influence measures of reading comprehension. At the end of each part is a commentary--written by an expert--that reviews the chapters, critiques the main points, and synthesizes critical issues.

This is a PHONICS and writing practice for K-1 emergent readers. It will help teach strategies needed to hear and decode short and long-vowel sounds, and provide practice with diagraphs, blends, word families and creative writing. It is available in Block Print and Manuscript. Each book has 96 tear-out pages, 11" x 8.5".

William Faulkner once called the short story "the most demanding form after poetry." In that form, he achieved splendid success. He wrote over a hundred short stories, published nearly all of them during his lifetime, and became one of the most frequently anthologized writers in the genre. Countless readers of Faulkner have first entered his world through one of the forty-two doors in Collected Stories.
Reading Faulkner: Collected Stories attempts to make the process of reading America’s major modern writer less daunting. It is a useful guide to Faulkner’s allusions, distinctly southern phrases, difficult words, and historical contexts, as well as to the intricacies of the prose. Arranged according to the Vintage edition’s table of contents, the annotations provide information about the material, political, and literary cultures that found their way into Faulkner’s greatest short fiction, including commentary on such classics as "A Rose for Emily," and "Barn Burning." Such information ranges from descriptions of 1930s farm implements and Great War airplanes to analyses of real estate deals and racial protocols. The authors offer explications of Faulkner’s allusions to other artists and thinkers from Christopher Marlowe to Voltaire to T.S. Eliot. An excellent companion volume to Collected Stories for beginning and experienced readers of Faulkner, Reading Faulkner: Collected Stories allows a fascinating glimpse of Faulkner’s mind at work on the materials of the world around him.