Text rendering is a method of deconstructing text that allows students to make decisions regarding the importance of the text, select the portions that are most meaningful to them, and then share it with classmates--all without fear of being ridiculed. The research on students constructing meaning from text is clear. In order for knowledge to…

This theoretical article examines reading processes using chaos theory as an analogy. Three principles of chaos theory are identified and discussed, then related to reading processes as revealed through eye movement research. Used as an analogy, the chaos theory principle of sensitive dependence contributes to understanding the difficulty in…

This study examined the extent to which readers integrate information from related texts as a function of both top-down evaluation processes and bottom-up resonance. In Experiment 1, participants read and recalled ambiguous texts about events that were preceded by a descriptive text (primer) of the event. Participants' recall of the ambiguous…

The author asserts that literacy teacher training programs should design opportunities for teachers to become more reflective about the literate self. Graduate students were queried about the relationship between their personal, historical, and professional literate selves. They documented their memories of reading and considered what it means to…

This article presents a detailed picture of six types of comprehension and five forms of questions that can be used to help students become interactive readers. The taxonomies of the types of comprehension and the forms of questions may also be used as a checklist for language teachers as well as materials developers. Teachers can use the…

According to current psychological models of deduction, people can draw inferences on the basis of information that they receive from different sources at different times. In 3 reading-comprehension experiments, the authors demonstrated that premises that appear far apart in a text (distant) are not accessed and are therefore not used as a basis…

Previous research has established that interest in a text is related to better comprehension and recall, but the impact of interest on comprehension in testing situations has not been widely investigated. This study used Hierarchical Linear Models (HLM) to examine the relationship between students' interest in reading passages and their…

The question is raised whether response-based practices in literature study ? as in other areas of aesthetic learning ? are conceptually incompatible with the practice of demonstrating the attainment of preselected outcomes. The individual reader brings unique experiences, memories, reading background and associations to the reading of…

This article focuses specifically on an aspect of Grade 1 children's literary understanding--the textual associations made by the students as they discussed nine picture books. This work extends the small body of research that has examined the responses of Grade 1 children (e.g., Kiefer, 1993; McGee, 1992; Sipe, 2000a), and also contributes to…

This article describes the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education (NUA), a nonprofit advocacy organization that engages with school communities through professional development to build relationships with educators, students, parents, and community stakeholders. NUA consultants are former and current university professors, former…

In this article, we provide the results of our examination of the range of multiliteracy activities that engage boys' time and attention, and the types of literacy skills and understandings they learn through their engagement with alternative texts. We focus particularly on video game play and creation/composition as a learning activity that…

Literacy educators are troubled by the isolated nature of many contemporary reading programs. Too often in middle school classrooms, students read alone, take computerized tests, and do not engage in authentic dialogue with peers. In this article, the authors argue that reading texts individually, while necessary, is not sufficient, and through…

"The Critical Word Factor," based on word recognition demands of texts, is a measure of text difficulty designed specifically for texts used by beginning readers. The measure is a function of the number of new, unique words per 100 running words of text that fall outside a designated curriculum. The authors investigated the validity of the…

Reading aloud makes important contributions to young children's literacy development, but some methods of reading aloud are much more beneficial than others. Researchers have investigated ways to make read-aloud sessions more meaningful for children, and several methods have emerged as particularly effective. This article examines the role of…

In earlier work on the hermeneutics of charity, the author explored the relevance of Augustine's insistence on charity in reading Scripture for interpreters of non-biblical texts. This article shows how one might bring such charitable reading into the classroom and reframe the teacher's task in its light. The article discusses some implications…