Offers a technique for use with films or filmstrips that transforms passive learning situations in content area classrooms into interactive ones. Contains a sample "reasoning guide." (FL)

To investigate the nature of children's reasoning about reality and fantasy in literature, grade-school children were presented with a series of paired printed materials and asked to tell which of the pair was more real and to explain their choices. (HOD)

Reports that reading achievement in the elementary grades is consistently rising and that older students may not be developing the higher level reading skills. (AEA)

Describes lessons that build students' critical thinking skills through improving class discussions, distinguishing between comprehension and critical reading, and involving students in writing while reading. (AEA)

Examines patterns of instruction in literature, particularly the transactional strategy proposed by Louise Rosenblatt, that emphasize the reader's immediate experience with the text. Illustrates the effective application of response-based teaching of literature. (RL)

The importance of critical reading skills is discussed. Motivation techniques and methods for adult instruction in analytical reading and thinking are suggested, together with ways for adult educators to evaluate their own teaching of critical reading skills. (SK)

Argues that the capacity to read and derive benefit from literature involves an interaction of at least three related abilities--aesthetic reading, reflecting, and problem solving. Offers an inquiry approach to teaching literature as one way to promote student development of these abilities. (RL)

Discusses how the use of writing in the classroom before, during, and after reading of a particular work can help students with critical inquiry, emotional commitment, and reader contribution while studying the work. (HTH)

A multiple choice exercise, in which students choose personality characteristics, brief lines of dialogue, and action is presented as a method for teaching students unfamiliar with literary devices or critical reading. (HTH)

Includes practical suggestions submitted by teachers concerning the use of student autobiographies in the reading lab, a sensible approach to inservice, critical reading instruction, and the development of a unit on planning a vacation. (MKM)

Outlines a procedure for helping mature students learn the art of textual analysis. Notes the advantages of problem solving in small groups as a means of developing skills for literary analysis. (RL)

Describes the use of the proverb "a watched pot never boils" to help students make the relationship between literal statements and the reader's own experience. (MKM)

Asks if there is a place for portfolio assessment in the literature classroom. Finds that portfolios help students use writing to engage literary texts in multiple and productive ways, and offer opportunities to examine effects of the reading process over the course of the writing pieces. Argues for a particular kind of portfolio focusing on a…

Records the author's understanding that public texts written by others are not the only texts carrying covert ideological meanings. The article's analysis of the author's own text on Aborigines in Australia reveals ideological positions previously unknown to her. Argues that even a well-intentioned teacher cognizant of how texts work ideologically…

Proposes that literature can be examined to see how it works simultaneously as a constraint upon and liberating means for women. Discusses "Yellow Women" by Leslie Marmon Silko and "The Company of Wolves" by Angela Carter, exploring the role of a reader's context for understanding a story. (PM)