Although "close reading" remains a worthwhile goal for undergraduate English courses, the term has actually been defined in numerous ways, which need to be compared and assessed. Unfortunately, the version of it spread by the New Critics has intimidated students, making them feel unable to decipher a literary text's real meaning. They…

This study emanates from an assumption that the skill of evaluating sources is placed in a complicated field, where an old academic tradition is paired with a contemporary emphasis on the possibilities and risks with modern sources. The aims of the study is to contribute with a description and analysis of these views as they are expressed in…

This article features FAST-R, or Formative Assessments of Student Thinking in Reading, a new assessment tool that measures critical-reading skills. FAST-R was developed by the the nonprofit Boston Plan for Excellence (BPE), a local education foundation, to provide teachers with information about what students are thinking when they try to find…

This essay is just one story in the ongoing conversation of how to approach teaching indigenous literatures in colonial educational institutions. Through sharing her experiences in teaching Richard Van Camp's "The Lesser Blessed," the author hopes to reveal the power of this particular text and the way its effects on students who…

Writers carefully include critical information in the opening lines of their chapters, but students often gloss over these beginning sentences, missing information that could help them better comprehend the text. To address this concern, the authors created a strategy that prompts students to examine the opening lines of chapters, helping readers…

The author examined the techniques of 3 middle school struggling readers to use silence to protect or promote their specific identities as readers in and out of school. J. Gee's (2002) theory of discursive identity framed this article. Results challenge the ways that teachers and researchers typically think of struggling readers. Rather than being…

This study examined the influences of reading decoding skills and world knowledge on third graders' comprehension of narrative and expository texts. Children read a narrative text and an expository text. Comprehension of each text was assessed with a free recall prompt, three cued recall prompts, and 12 multiple-choice questions. Tests from the…

The aim of this study was to go further than considering only cognitive factors to extend the understanding of the complex, dynamic underlying knowledge revision processes. Fifth graders were assigned to 2 reading conditions. Participants in 1 condition read a refutational text about light, whereas participants in the other read a traditional…

In this qualitative study, the authors merge two bodies of previously separated scholarship: (1) a socio-cultural understanding of adolescent girls in light of the shifting meaning of ideal girlhood, and (2) the participation and success of adolescent girls in school-based literacy activities. They apply these fields of inquiry to explore the…

The purpose of this study was to validate and extend the findings of an exhaustive literature search in Year 1 and a meta-analysis in Year 2 of a 3-year project in which nine (9) small-group discussion approaches were identified. Having identified parameters of discussion that were, to a greater or lesser extent, present in these nine discussion…

In 1991, David Macaulay was awarded the Randolph Caldecott Medal for his picturebook, "Black and White" (1990). He believed the Caldecott committee's choice communicated many messages to readers of all ages: "that it is essential to see, not merely to look; that words and pictures can support each other; that it isn't necessary to think in a…

The definition of literacy has become narrow, bounded, and associated predominantly with measurement of cognitive skills used to decode words. In this article, the author explores the absence in the literacy instruction of a clear, deliberate, and intentional focus upon "connectedness" between the reader and the text. The author maintains that…

Everyone has a literacy component to their lives. Family literacy refers to the ways people learn and use literacy in their home and everyday lives. Many times there is a disconnect between family and school literacies. Schools do not have systematic ways of tapping into the wealth of knowledge families possess and linking that knowledge to school…

While visiting the classroom of an English teacher on campus, the author noticed a large number of literature textbooks that were being replaced with a newer edition. In this article, she describes a project, which was inspired by these discarded literature textbooks, designed to introduce students to an art form based on ideas rather than…

High school teacher Melissa Troise challenges students to recognize the relationships that exist between literary theories, such as Marxism, feminism, and postcolonialism, and urges students to expand their contexts for reading texts by accessing and combining theories. Troise believes theory provides students with the potential to better…