Reveals that story grammar research has provided educators with new insights into how children comprehend simple stories. Describes evidence for the existence of story schema, presents results of developmental story grammar research, and recommends teaching strategies based on the research. (RWB)

Suggests that informal reading inventories (IRIs) should include both narrative and expository passages. Describes a study of several reading inventories indicating that some current secondary school IRIs have been constructed with some consistency of text types, but failed to reveal a clear picture of text structure for the inventories. (HTH)

Experienced teachers enrolled in two graduate reading classes examined seven informal reading inventories (IRIs)--three at the elementary level and four at the secondary level--to (1) discover what text types (narrative or expository) they used at each level to measure student comprehension skills and determine instructional levels and (2)…

Analyzes four informal reading inventories to determine the text type of each passage, whether narrative passages are well formed, and whether expository passages are well organized. Finds almost half the narratives poorly formed. Concludes that the lack of continuity in text type and organization could result in children's comprehension scores…