A review of recent ERIC materials concerned with textbooks, prose learning, and learning strategies, to determine factors that contribute to learning from textbooks. (DD)

Discusses how student journals can help teachers and students identify behaviors and attitudes that affect study skills and college work. (AEA)

Asserts that students' inaccurate prior knowledge in science can hinder the learning process. Presents instructional strategies for elementary and secondary school students that have been proved effective by research, such as augmented activation activities, refutational text, nonrefutational text, and the discussion web. (PRA)

Describes how a teacher-researcher used knowledge modeling as a basis for assessing students' knowledge. Discusses how the scoring template was created and how the students' recollections were scored. Finds that students with no prior knowledge of a subject were at a disadvantage in the classroom. (PRA)

Presents three types of simple events knowledge models: (1) a simple list of events; (2) a list of cause-effect sequences; and (3) a list of events that describe a problem and its solution. (SR)

Defines and describes the processes by which students acquire new knowledge: accretion, tuning, and restructuring. Relates these processes to knowledge models presented in earlier columns. Discusses extension activities. (RS)

Considers event phenomena and how such phenomena might be understood in terms of process knowledge models. Presents the step and stage process knowledge model, the classification process knowledge model, and the conditional process knowledge model. (SR)

Clarifies the goal of reading instruction in the middle school and draws on the ERIC database for sources that complete the transition from learning to read to reading to learn. Reports on the suggested emphasis on reading laboratories and the fostering of reading of expository texts. (JK)

Describes three metacognitive abilities important for learning: self-knowledge, task knowledge, and self-monitoring. Identifies six metacognitive characteristics that separate proficient readers from less effective readers. Lists five principles on which independent learning is based. (RS)

Provides a checklist that considers "learnability" factors as well as "understandability" factors to use as an alternative to readability formulas. (MKM)

Discusses helping students understand cases and classes through knowledge modeling. Discusses classification and human cognition, and classification and pictorial knowledge models. Provides classroom extension activities. (SR)

Reviews monitoring theory and presents specific strategies for teaching comprehension monitoring. (AEA)

Describes a teaching unit that involves students in reading and analyzing elements of humor in young people's literature. Focuses on what makes quality humorous books funny as well as literary. (FL)

Criticizes the Detroit Tests of Learning Aptitude 2 (DLTA-2): (1) scoring criteria for the Story Construction Test are questionable; (2) the Word Fragment Test may not be practically significant; (3) the Picture Book is inconvenient to use without an index or table of contents. One major strength is the provision for combining subtest scores. (SRT)

Describes five strategies that foster independent learning of content area vocabulary. (MKM)