Developmental Spelling in Fourth Grade: An Analysis of What Poor Readers Do

Since Carol Chomsky (1971a, 1971b) and Charles Read (1971) published their pioneer reports on the development of writing behaviors in young children, examinations of the developmental or invented spellings of emergent writers have contributed to changes in emphases in early literacy instruction. Before that time educators seldom advocated writing experiences for children before they learned to read (Adams, 1990). During the past twenty-five years, there have been careful descriptions and analyses of the developmental stages and strategies of young children who experiment with and work through patterns of spelling while discovering written language. As a result of this body of work, more teachers have learned to decipher and assess the development of spellings of preschoolers and primary grade students. The increased ability to understand beginning attempts with print of the youngest writers has no doubt contributed to the encouragement of story writing, journals, and other writing activities from the earliest school years. Fortunately, the increase in opportunities to write also enhances the development of phonemic awareness and word recognition, both of which are predictors of future reading success (Gill, 1992; Juel, Griffith, and Gough, 1986; Perfetti, 1985; Tunmer and Nesdale, 1985)

Developing Understanding of Research-based Pedagogy with Preservice Teachers: An Instrumental Case Study

Preservice teachers have difficulty incorporating research-based instructional strategies and often revert to those observed during their own school years. This study describes how preservice teachers used a framework of planning, implementation, feedback, and reflection to try research-based teaching practices from their methods courses and examine their notions of effective pedagogy. This instrumental case study of 50 preservice teachers in a two-day-per-week field experience includes intensive interviews of six selected students. Findings include kinds of support reported as helpful in implementing new instructional strategies, difficulties experienced in the implementation of strategies, and new understandings of effective teaching during use of the framework. Participants used the framework to identify and examine preconceived notions of effective pedagogy, but also revealed some unplanned learnings

Common variants of the <i>BRCA1</i> wild-type allele modify the risk of breast cancer in <i>BRCA1</i> mutation carriers

Mutations in the &lt;i&gt;BRCA1&lt;/i&gt; gene substantially increase a woman's lifetime risk of breast cancer. However, there is great variation in this increase in risk with several genetic and non-genetic modifiers identified. The &lt;i&gt;BRCA1&lt;/i&gt; protein plays a central role in DNA repair, a mechanism that is particularly instrumental in safeguarding cells against tumorigenesis. We hypothesized that polymorphisms that alter the expression and/or function of &lt;i&gt;BRCA1&lt;/i&gt; carried on the wild-type (non-mutated) copy of the &lt;i&gt;BRCA1&lt;/i&gt; gene would modify the risk of breast cancer in carriers of &lt;i&gt;BRCA1&lt;/i&gt; mutations. A total of 9874 &lt;i&gt;BRCA1&lt;/i&gt; mutation carriers were available in the Consortium of Investigators of Modifiers of &lt;i&gt;BRCA1/2&lt;/i&gt; (CIMBA) for haplotype analyses of &lt;i&gt;BRCA1&lt;/i&gt;. Women carrying the rare allele of single nucleotide polymorphism rs16942 on the wild-type copy of &lt;i&gt;BRCA1&lt;/i&gt; were at decreased risk of breast cancer (hazard ratio 0.86, 95% confidence interval 0.77–0.95, &lt;i&gt;P&lt;/i&gt; = 0.003). Promoter &lt;i&gt;in vitro&lt;/i&gt; assays of the major &lt;i&gt;BRCA1&lt;/i&gt; haplotypes showed that common polymorphisms in the regulatory region alter its activity and that this effect may be attributed to the differential binding affinity of nuclear proteins. In conclusion, variants on the wild-type copy of &lt;i&gt;BRCA1&lt;/i&gt; modify risk of breast cancer among carriers of &lt;i&gt;BRCA1&lt;/i&gt; mutations, possibly by altering the efficiency of &lt;i&gt;BRCA1&lt;/i&gt; transcription