Recounts efforts by the author and others to shift reading instruction from dependence on basals to the use of trade books and a greater range of choice for students in selecting reading materials. (HTH)

The language experience approach is a reading methodoloy that is highly organized, highly structured, and very systematic, but that allows teachers to teach without texts. It is a multiple, variegated set of activities designed to serve one purpose, namely, the instructional use of pupil's own language. As such, there are five interrelated aspects…