Analyzes the content of 20 "Book Club Discussion Guides" from 13 different commercial publishers to understand the particular constructions of readers and reading embodied in these materials. Finds that the "curriculum" of these guides is not likely to foster a collective cultural or critical reflection on self or world--they…

Examines how researchers can study children's interaction with literature, discussing various perspectives that can be taken on children's literary responses and suggesting lines of inquiry and concepts that might be useful for the continued examination of children's responses. Focuses on the author, the literary text itself, the reader, and the…

Examines the reading experiences of six African-American middle school girls. Finds that their book selection processes were different than those proposed by the professional multicultural education literature; they found affirmations, support, solutions, and decision-making skills in their reading; and that what mattered were the connections the…

Using a critical model of reader response to literature in diverse urban secondary classrooms is important. The model helps teachers encourage diverse readers to generate their own text so they can engage with text that is more interesting than the traditional canon and become more willing and able to respond. Samples of diverse urban students'…

Studies by Unsworth and Williams (1988, 1990) compared the textual variation of purpose-written big books with literary texts. Purpose-written big books help children to predict repetitive clauses that realize explicit and simplistic meanings. (Contains six references.) (JP)

Offers a list of more than 50 books, in picture book and board book format, that are best suited to the developmental needs and interests of infants and preschool children. Books are listed under the following headings: identification of objects, rhythm and rhyme, pattern and repetition, and contrast and opposition. (AEF)

Reviews the evolution of relevant research in both response to literature and in the enactment of response-based practices in classrooms. Examines research on text, readers, and contexts. Examines research exploring how readers construct texts as cultural worlds, construct identities through participation in worlds, and share responses through…

Discusses the picture books of Leo Lionni and describes how Vivian Gussin Paley, a Chicago elementary school teacher, used his books for an entire year's curriculum in her kindergarten class. Highlights include children's engagement with literature, and other learning activities based on the books. (LRW)

Describes how students in an 8th-grade rural English classroom were focused and engaged over a 9-week period as they investigated and researched a poem of their own choice by a Native American poet, and wrote a hypertext web of their research journey. Notes that students experienced text in a new way, as a network of links. (SR)

Learning logs, or reading response logs, have long been established as an effective reading strategy that helps students learn from text (Atwell, 1987; Blough & Berman, 1991; Calkins, 1986; Commander & Smith, 1996; Kuhrt & Farris, 1990; Reed, 1988; Sanders, 1985). In this paper, the author describes her experiences using learning logs as a…

This study reports on an analysis of the relation between kindergarten children's developing theory of mind and their understanding of characters' actions and consciousness in story narrative, based on Bruner's (1986) notion of the dual landscapes of action and consciousness. Wordless picture books were used to model these two aspects of…

Eighty college students read textbook passages that either included marginal inserts to signal key concepts or did not include these inserts. Signaling key concepts enhanced performance on content quizzes overall and on subsets of items assessing signaled material. Performance was not affected on subsets of items for nonsignaled content. Students…

This article describes a small-scale project designed to help engage reluctant adolescent readers in voluntary reading practice during sustained silent reading (SSR). Three teachers worked with a secondary school reading expert to identify and agree on elements of effective instructional conversations and then implemented these "book talks" with a…

Introduction: Experimental validation of a self-regulated learning procedure for university students, i.e. the "meaningful text-reading" strategy, is reported in this paper. The strategy's theoretical framework is the "ACRA Model" of learning strategies. The strategy consists of a flexible, recurring sequence of five mental operations of written…

We present a project for a differential equations class: an analysis of an H. G. Wells story in which is given a submersible's descent time, its ascent time, and its eruption from the surface before splashdown. (Contains 5 figures.)