Analyzes eight leading basal reading programs to determine the types of writing included in each and the array of writing types used in three standardized reading tests included in the programs. (FL)

Examines teachers' decisions to make adjustments in their preplanned discussion routines to better facilitate students' comprehension of previously assigned content area materials in terms of how texts figured into those decisions. (FL)

Indicates that textbook explication alone of causes of events is insufficient for acquisition and use of hierarchically organized knowledge; students must be taught how to construct text-based information into hierarchically structured form and use it for making predictions. (FL)

Over the past 10 years, traditional elementary history textbooks have been criticized by a number of reviewers. In part as a result, some fifth-grade teachers, many of whom have students who are learning chronological U.S. history for the first time, have begun to augment these textbooks with biographies, historical fiction, literature-based…

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)…

Examines the nature and prevalence of author-provided cues to effective processing of introductory college textbooks in psychology and biology. Concludes that the authors of the texts chose cues that would be effective even with relatively passive learners and rarely chose cues that demanded much activity from readers. (SKC)

Hypothesizes that typographic cues structured according to a defined set of common attributes within textbooks enable readers to discriminate between various levels of information and to make generalizations about the information contained in each level. Proposes a method of identifying and ranking categories of information. (KEH)

A study was conducted to examine the instructional approaches to decoding and comprehension in the first grade basal reading programs published by Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich (1983); Houghton Mifflin (1979); Ginn (1976); and SRA Reading Mastery (1983). In addition, analyses were completed on the comprehensibility of matched stories from each of…