Close Reading utilizes several strategies to help readers think more critically about a text. Close reading can be performed within the context of shared readings, read-alouds by the teacher, literature discussion groups, and guided reading groups. Students attempting to more closely read difficult texts may benefit from technologies and platforms…

Teaching children in the primary grades the text structures and features used by authors of information text has been shown to improve comprehension of information texts and provide the scaffolding and support these children need in order to write their own information texts. As teachers implement the "English Language Arts Common Core State…

Describes uses of the Lexile Framework(R) in actual practice in Florida, Georgia, California, and North Carolina. As it connects reading comprehension tests, books, magazines, and newspapers to a common scale of measurement, the Lexile Framework can be used to form a community working for better reading. (SLD)

Describes the "story face," an adaptation of story mapping that provides a visual framework for understanding, identifying, and remembering elements in narrative text. Discusses several strengths of the story face strategy used with students in grades 1-5: easy to construct, easy to remember, can guide retelling, is collaboratively…

States that as electronic media increasingly begins to dominate narratives for children, the very nature of narrative is changing. Explains that the future of children's literature depends upon the application of understanding intellectual changes, at least through a revision of the meanings of literate and good reader. (CMK)

Describes the intermediate forms of children's informational and story composition across the elementary grades. Finds that even the youngest children differentiated between the genres with over half of all kindergartners and first graders producing texts classified at some level of organizational complexity above labels and statement, and by…

Elementary school students learn in school to stay within the boundaries of a single text, but students should be encouraged to read beyond a single text. A "single-passage paradigm" pervades school-based reading instruction, research, and assessment. Four scaffolding issues can promote a variety of stimulating approaches for reading…