Helping students engage with complex texts has been a longstanding challenge, though teachers have received little guidance about practices that help students in engaging with texts. This paper provides a range of empirical evidence about a tool designed to provide formative insight into text-focused teaching, which we used to reliably score more…

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,…

The current study is a contribution to reading research dealing with tuition in reading comprehension and specifically with the issue of arranging tuition to support the development of metacognition. The empirical findings referred to in this study are from textual discussions of works of fiction in grades 6 and 7. The specific focus of the study…

This paper gives a short analysis of the nature of reading. Though it is generally believed that reading involves perceiving the written form of language, the term reading has not been clearly defined up to date. It is possible to see reading as a process, or to examine the product of that process. Three reading models, namely Bottom-up Model,…

This article examines how a second-grader demonstrates that reading is not about decoding letters and words in linear order but is a more complex activity involving the reader's decisions with respect to several aspects of their knowledge of their language and how comprehension is key to transacting with texts. The paper observes and documents the…

Reading aloud makes important contributions to young children's literacy development, but some methods of reading aloud are much more beneficial than others. Researchers have investigated ways to make read-aloud sessions more meaningful for children, and several methods have emerged as particularly effective. This article examines the role of…

Provides suggestions for using transactional theory, which stresses the importance of interacting with text, in teaching literature at the secondary level. Lists seven principles for teaching that are inherent in transactional theory. (SKC)

Presents the background, design, research, and possible uses for the Cloze Story Map, which combines the elements of cloze with a story-mapping strategy to represent the structure and semantic content of both narrative and expository text. (FL)

Describes the basic components of Iser's theory, then suggests ways to get students to interact with texts. (FL)

The study reported in this paper responds to the current movement toward literature-based reading instruction. Five fifth-graders attending a Midwest, urban school participated in the 10-week study in a classroom in which the teacher initiated a literature-based reading program. Data sets included observational field notes, audiotaped lessons,…

A study was conducted to determine how effective webbing--schematic representation of main ideas and supporting details--would be in helping students build bridges between their reading of a text and outlining the material in it. Subjects were 21 sixth grade students, who had been working on outlining and were familiar with its purpose and form.…

Examines conceptual change research to develop an instructional framework for science educators consonant with research on special education populations. Delineates a taxonomy of knowledge structures (classification, structure, process/mechanism, and concept/theory frames) derived from research that may be used to guide teaching strategy…

Investigates the effects of structural cueing (color or no color) and decision level (rote or semantic) on students' verbatim retention of technical prose and concludes that the results support the distinctiveness of encoding hypothesis for learning via the microcomputer. (DF)

Tests a new model of the child's meaning-making process in response to literary text. Finds that the model is not disproved and serves as a valid means for adults to share information and ideas about young peoples' transactions with literary texts. (MG)

Discusses what research says about silent and oral reading and the implications this has for reading instruction and instruction in the content areas. States that students are more attentive during silent reading and participate more in follow-up discussions of silent reading than in oral reading. (MG)