Develops an Information Text Reading Activity (ITRA), a conceptual framework for presenting reading lessons that will engage students in reading informational text actively. Notes that the framework provides a basis for selecting and evaluating instructional activities and assists the teacher in moving students toward independence in learning. (RS)

States that comprehension of expository text and the ability to summarize are factors in students' success with such material. Describes a model that induces students to use existing schemata to create new and necessary expectations while providing a technique for explicitly teaching the components of effective summaries. (JK)

Notes the weakness of comprehension assessment as it occurs in standardized tests and exercise books, and reports on a new approach which views reading as a constructive process that results from a complex set of interactions between reader and texts. (NH)

Describes a schema-awareness activity (used with sixth graders and college students) that provides teachers with a model of how students can use their past experiences and their ability to infer and predict when reading. Notes that the activity convinces students that they bring to the reading act much more than they encounter on the printed page.…

Describes the discussion continuum, a class activity that helps readers to interact with the text by taking a position that they will have to support. Notes that it promotes lively class discussion. (SR)

Recommends teaching both mental imagery (an unobtrusive, natural text processing strategy) and summarizing (an efficient text reorganization strategy) to students who do not spontaneously use them. (NKA)

Discusses how teachers can help students learn to read with a sense of the author--who wrote the book, how, and why. Argues that building a schema for various genres and more sophisticated writing techniques strengthens comprehension and enables students to enjoy books on their own. (RS)

Finds that, when middle school students write about relevant personal experiences before reading, they enjoy and comprehend the text more, are more on-task, offer more sophisticated responses to characters, and like the texts more. (SR)

Explains how to ask questions that will help students focus on structure and better understand expository text. Notes that because students must make both internal and external connections to text structure, teachers should ask questions which prompt students to identify the relationships among ideas in a text so that meaningful learning can…

Explores briefly the New Criticism that dominated literature instruction until recently and then provides an overview of reader response theory and how response approaches can be used in the classroom to enhance reading. (NKA)

Compares skilled and unskilled adult readers' approaches to finding the main idea in text. Describes and tests Author's Intended Message (AIM), a holistic main idea strategy suitable for independent use by college study skills students. Investigates the effectiveness of this strategy. (RS)

Notes that expository text, the predominant form of writing in content textbooks, is generally more difficult for students to comprehend than narrative, which predominates in basal readers. Recommends the use of extended anticipation guides as a strategy for helping students build background knowledge for understanding content area texts. (SKC)

Explains why proficient readers may find it difficult to understand written directions. Indicates direct instructional strategies for helping such readers handle procedural text independently. (NKA)

Describes the fundamentals of reader response theory, focuses on the aspects most relevant to reading instruction, and presents a method of teaching using reader response as a vehicle for improving student ability to learn from text. (NKA)

Outlines five variations of the Directed Reading Thinking Activity that can help students become independent readers of narrative text. (NKA)