Teaching students to become readers who can work with an author to "build" a text requires a better understanding of the nature of the author-reader relationship. This essay discusses the rights and responsibilities of that relationship by presenting writing and reading as a rhetorical situation--an interaction between author,…

In this Inquiry Study, participants will explore the process of reading expository texts--the strategies participant/teachers use to make sense of them, and how expository texts are similar to and different from narrative and other types of texts. Participants will then examine aspects of expository texts, such as text structures, vocabulary, and…

This comprehensive sourcebook, unique in content and design, is a resource for teaching reading and language arts in Grades K-8. Aiming to combine the best features of an academic text and a practical, hands-on teacher's guide, the book provides educators with proven research and instructional strategies necessary for balanced reading programs. It…

Suggesting that the process of reading, however complex, is knowable, and that the scientific study of reading is both necessary and possible, this book brings together what has been learned through the scientific study of reading by carefully observing readers in the act of reading. The book looks at reading in the real world, at how readers and…

This book uses phonics to teach reading in a complete manual for beginning and remedial readers of all ages. The book builds sounds and spelling patterns slowly and systematically into syllables, phrases, and sentences of gradually increasing complexity, presenting only one sound per lesson--each new sound builds upon previously learned skills for…

Based on the notion that visual decisions play an important role in what children recognize and interpret in books and that teachers have a special responsibility to help students become visually literate, this article draws parallels between visual and verbal concepts and suggests some activities for teaching "picture reading" skills in the…

Using the guiding question, "What is reading?," this lesson invites students to interact with a variety of different texts as they attempt to uncover the skills necessary to successfully interact with the text. Based upon the discussion that follows, students will create a living definition of reading. During three 40-minute lessons, students…

In recent years, there has been increasing emphasis on the idea of reading as a "socio-cultural" phenomenon, derived from the idea that reading is not an isolated skill but is necessarily related to the purposes reading will be put to in particular social and cultural contexts. This collection of essays acknowledges the undoubted…

Noting that readers are a lot like detectives, this two-part book (a professional book for teachers and a fun "nonworkbook" for students) introduces students and teachers to "mystery cases" that are actually reading strategy lessons for third through eighth graders and their teachers. The teacher section offers a comprehensive overview of the…

Although knowledge of multimeaning words is important for reading comprehension, deaf readers may know only the most common meanings or nuances of high-frequency multimeaning words. Results of a study are reported in which 33 profoundly hearing impaired students stratified into three equal age groups (ages 10, 11, and 12) were administered a…

Arguing that teachers need to provide direct instruction if they expect children to learn to apply semantic or syntactic clues as they are reading, this paper presents a variety of activities for teaching children to use context clues. Among the more than 35 activities described are: gathering clues from pictures, using a language experience…

Describes an approach to teaching the elementary school curriculum using heuristics, which develops children's critical thinking skills. (SRT)

There seems to be a pendulum in the field of education that sways from one extreme to another when a teaching method is introduced. The whole language concept caught on, and phonics instruction was then considered defunct. The pendulum now in the process of swinging back is being intercepted, before it goes to the extreme of "all…

This book presents an interactive model using quality children's literature as the foundation for teaching reading and writing in grades 3 through 6, based on the premise that reading and writing are complementary processes through the shared goal of constructing meaning. Four main genres (fiction, traditional literature, fantasy, and non-fiction)…

Noting the persistent tendency to polarize questions of reading instruction into diametrically opposed or simplified positions, this book (developed in the United Kingdom) is a teacher's guide to learning to read. The first part of the book surveys what is known about reading, in chapters corresponding to the four major partners in the reading…