Designed to assess the cognitive requirement expected or implied in beginning reading materials and in their instructional suggestions and to determine whether these materials are appropriate to the cognitive development of the children who will use them, this instrument is for use by evaluators with the first reader in a basal series. It directs…

Eighty college students read textbook passages that either included marginal inserts to signal key concepts or did not include these inserts. Signaling key concepts enhanced performance on content quizzes overall and on subsets of items assessing signaled material. Performance was not affected on subsets of items for nonsignaled content. Students…

In reviewing current literature on the importance of examples in the process of teaching learning, this report takes into particular consideration textbook approaches that emphasize the role of examples for comprehension and motivation. Utilizing a constructive theory of prose comprehension, it then attempts to specify the function of examples in…

Suggests that those who evaluate textbooks for adoption in schools use a framework such as the one included, which examines writing style, tone, analogies and illustrations, sentence and paragraph coherence, headings and subheadings, and location of charts, graphs, and figures. (JC)

Focusing on what authors can do to facilitate learning from content area textbooks, this report labels authors as "considerate," providing text that readers can understand with a minimum of cognitive effort, or as "inconsiderate," creating text that requires a conscientious, highly skilled effort if readers are to comprehend…

An 11 page chapter from a sixth grade social studies text was used in a study assessing the complexities of comprehending social studies materials and the sensitivity of prospective and experienced teachers to these complexities. A sentence-by-sentence analysis of the thinking operations required for mastery of the material showed that numerous…

Papers in this report were presented at a conference on text characteristics, convened as part of the Learning from Text Project. The foreword describes the University of California and California State University Joint Projects Steering Committee project to determine the relationship between ability to learn from text and academic achievement,…

Intended to help teachers both improve students' text comprehension and better understand the teaching-learning process involved, this book focuses on comprehension and concept development as the central core of an effective educational program. The book's five sections deal with teaching explicit comprehension skills, precomprehension and…