Reports the results of a poll of southeastern Iowa tenth through twelfth graders to find the most popular of 250 recently published books. Genres include fantasy, war stories, contemporary realism, romance, science fiction, horror, and supernatural. Reviews of the readers' choices are included. (RBW)

An investigation of effects of information processing models on instruction showed that strategy and metacognitive instruction is infrequent in teacher-child interactions; a behavioral paradigm captures most teacher-child interactions; what teachers say and do is discrepant; and content of teacher-child verbal behavior varies minimally between…

Examines what teachers do when they read texts in particular genres, and suggests how to encourage similar behavior in students. (CRH)

Describes a small scale study of children's experiences with books read aloud in nursery schools. Explores what young children learn from hearing books and stories read aloud, and shows how data from this study and a larger scale study conducted simultaneously can illuminiate thinking about early literacy. (HTH)

Compares 20 learning disabled children with Exner (1978) norms on nonpatient, withdrawn, and behavior problem children. The findings clearly show differences in perceptual accuracy, affective ratio, egocentricity index, and reaction to emotion-laden stimuli. (JAC)

Argues that the essential discipline in literature is neither learning to write essays for an exam nor keeping up with the latest scholarship but giving close attention to the words on the page and learning to respond to them. (MM)

Surveyed 404 parents of adolescents to study the relationship between parental control and influence techniques and adolescent behavior. Results suggested that compliance is substantially related to the level of control attempted by the parent, while emotional acceptance is not. Results emphasized the importance of differentiating between…

Demonstrates how peer interaction during writing helps children experience connections between reading and writing. Describes children's responses to unfinished pieces, a peer's "published" piece, other students' published books (read aloud by a student other than the author), and to books written by professional authors. (HTH)

Attempts to verify or identify a valid operational definition of literary response by determining its constituents through the use of a refined version of the Response Preference Measure. (HOD)

In response to the question "Aren't there any happy books anymore?" this column examines the work of Elizabeth Enright and how it contains trial and conflict but still manages to convey a sense of security, reason, and humor. (CRH)

Correlational analysis of observed reciprocal interactions of 15 students from each group of learning disabled, behavior-disordered, and regular elementary students, and their peers, teachers, and classroom aids indicated that negative peer-student interactions were reciprocal and that positive or negative teacher-student interactions were not…

Discusses how "Sons and Lovers" was used to elicit values discussions using questions from "Teaching in the Content Areas" by Harold Herber. (CRH)

Reports on a survey of secondary school English teachers and principals that identified the most common instructional problems. (HOD)

Gleser and Lubin put forth a series of objections to Kalter, Marsden and Ericson's 1974 article on methods of controlling for response productivity. The latter contend that the Gleser and Lubin objections were either not to the point or biased on lack of attention and misunderstanding. (NG)