Discusses the use of story frames as a strategy for teaching reading comprehension to first grade students, and includes examples of student responses. (JC)

Argues against ritualized approaches to literature. Endorses four aesthetic teaching stances which vary the conversations that can occur between student and student, student and teacher, and student and literature, and which pursue a "playful" literature curriculum, value the unexpected, and allow conversations where children talk their…

Learning-disabled students deficient in classification and categorization require specific instruction in these skills. Use of a classification/categorization instructional model improved the questioning strategies of 60 learning-disabled students, aged 10 to 12. The use of similar models is discussed as a basis for instruction in science, social…

Describes a method of using newspaper articles in the English-language classroom called Read-Ask-and-Tell. The place of authentic materials in the classroom, including some of the pitfalls, are discussed. The Reading, Asking, and Telling components are outlined, and activities for consolidation and reinforcement of skills are suggested. Appendices…

Examines the nature of children's sense of theme in narratives as it develops over three age levels--kindergarten, second grade, and fourth grade--and investigates the role of literature in that development. Concludes that thematic identification is an early developmental strategy. (MM)

Indicates that a broad age range of students can use some purpose questions as cues to activate background knowledge. Suggest topic familiarity, amount of information presented, and the presence of genre clues as text features affecting schema activation. (NKA)

Suggests that viewing aesthetic reading as a process whereby readers and writers attempt to "make contact" and collaborate in making meaning forces one to adopt research strategies that go beyond measuring reading comprehension, and offers two studies to illustrate these ideas. (JC)

Develops several lessons that integrate reading and writing for the purpose of understanding and retaining knowledge. Illustrates the use of a feature matrix, as well as webs, outlines, and timelines as organizational devices to engage the students in active comprehension of text. (NKA)

Reviews the literature on classroom reading instruction and elaborates the results of a series of studies that hypothesized that high-risk students, such as those typically found in low reading groups, would become more aware of how to reason during reading if their teachers explained the mental acts associated with strategic skill use. (NKA)

Evaluates "The Reading Report Card" and application of Reading Proficiency Scale to that report with 1984-85 data on reading ability in adults between ages 21 and 25. Also discusses reading trends in relation to different segments of population and in terms of where decreases and increases in reading ability have occurred between 1974…

Describes the fundamentals of reader response theory, focuses on the aspects most relevant to reading instruction, and presents a method of teaching using reader response as a vehicle for improving student ability to learn from text. (NKA)

Three ideas for class activities are described: comprehension of newspaper and magazine headlines and titles; the pronunciation, formation, and use of acronyms; and the extraction and elaboration of a story from a popular song. (MSE)

A study of native English-speakers' (N=36) and English-as-a-second-language students' (N=60) understanding of conjunctions while reading indicated that more advanced ESL students were more capable of inferencing or using available logical relationships than were intermediate ESL students. (Author/CB)

Using third, sixth, and ninth grade students of Anglo, Black, and Hispanic ethnicity, a study examined their use of the conjunctions "and,""but,""because," and "even though." Results indicated that for all groups, correct use of conjunctions was correlated with reading comprehension. (HOD)

Describes a study into what happens when academics who learned English for Special Purposes broadened their goals and attempted reading geared to those with a knowledge of "general" English. Results showed that participant comprehension increased significantly, but reading speed did not consistently increase. (Author/SED)