Teaching for theme is one aspect of reading comprehension that is often elusive for both teachers and students. Specifically, teachers are challenged with elevating students' thinking from the plot level to a more abstract level when teaching for theme understanding. Students are challenged with transitioning between the story world and the real…

I present a sampling of picture books with a focus on three peritextual features in particular: dust jackets, case covers that are different from the dust jackets, and endpapers. First, I briefly highlight scholarship related to peritextual features, followed by a description of four picture books with these three peritextual features, and…

In today's diverse and global world, the importance of disciplinary literacy is rapidly increasing. Thus, elementary educators must consider ways to incorporate disciplinary literacy into their instruction. Elementary educators often implement the transactional theory of reading to enhance comprehension and evoke aesthetic responses to fiction…

In this article, I showcase an informational text reading comprehension unit that centers on text features commonly found in science textbooks. I taught this unit to a sixth-grade class and highlighted the work samples of three focal students here. The overarching question that guided this work was as follows: How can I focus my instruction on…

This article covers the contribution reading and stories (children's literature) have made to reading, its study, its material world, and the implications for teaching and learning to read -particularly with picturebooks -- at the heart of that practice. It first explores the category of children's literature as a possible 'lie', but also its…

"Science of reading" is a term that has been used variously, but its use within research, policy, and the press has tended to share one important commonality: an intensive focus on assessed reading proficiency as the primary goal of reading instruction. Although well intentioned, this focus directs attention toward a problematically…

Reading comprehension is the goal of reading, and making inferences is vital. Authors usually expect readers to make multiple types of inferences, including anaphoric, background knowledge, predictive, and retrospective. Common core assessments include all of these, yet instructional materials focus mostly on only one type, retrospective. This…

The increase of graphic novels in libraries and schools and on award lists illustrates one way that children's literature is changing. This article explores the relation between words and illustrations in a popular graphic novel. The multimodal format of graphic novels requires readers to consider the words, graphics, panel sizes, and uses of…

Face-to-face time with students in the early childhood college setting is at a premium and often flies by before we begin to scratch the surface of active learning. Building a community of learners is one of our main goals as instructors; therefore, we strive to set up active learning environments optimal for all students. This reflection on…

A key instructional goal of English language arts instruction is teaching students to read and interpret complex literary texts. This report reviews the literature on the development and pedagogy of literary analysis skills. It analyzes literary analysis skills as a "key practice," a bundle of disciplinary skills and strategies that form…

In a recent classroom-based action research study, the author's adolescent students deepened their informational text comprehension skills over the course of several interactive, strategic shared text studies. As suggested by research and theory, her students appeared to observe and appropriate cognitive, executive, and discourse strategies as…

This article shares insights from a symposium celebrating the retirement of P. David Pearson, one of the most influential reading researchers of the last half-century. Presenters addressed the nature, instruction, and assessment of reading comprehension, teacher learning and comprehension, and the texts and contexts of comprehension. Collectively,…

Posing text-dependent questions is crucial for facilitating students' comprehension of the text. However, text-dependent questions should not merely ask students to reflect the author's literal or even inferential meaning. The author's message is the starting place for comprehension, rather than the end goal or object of comprehension. The text…

Purpose: In this discussion as part of a response to Catts and Kamhi's "Prologue: Reading Comprehension Is Not a Single Activity" (2017), the authors provide selected examples from 4th-, 5th-, and 6th-grade texts to demonstrate, in agreement with Catts and Kamhi, that reading comprehension is a multifaceted and complex ability. The…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptualization of reading comprehension that extends beyond the traditional cognitive viewpoint on comprehension common in the field. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on literature and theory from various perspectives (cognitive, sociocultural and critical), the authors propose a conceptual…