This study investigates the effectiveness of an instructional program designed to teach 2nd graders how to comprehend compare-contrast expository text. Along with introducing new content (animal classification), the program emphasizes text structure via clue words, a sequence of questions, and a graphic organizer, and via the close analysis of…

The paper focuses on principles for the design of school activities involving the collective reading of multiple texts. We show that the collective reading of multiple texts has been practiced in rare occasions in Western history. Scrutiny of the reasons for the persistence and the decline of this practice in different societies suggests that it…

Scholars have celebrated the spoken word in King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail," but they have overlooked the significance of the Letter's writing. In this essay I closely read King's act of writing the Letter, along with the figures of speech he employs in it, and I show how both--by enacting the mass media's ability to cross contexts--are…

A mailed survey compared the experiences of distance-learning students with print disabilities who were supported by audio recordings of materials, the experiences of students with print disabilities who were supported by an electronic system that permitted more effective access to the same materials, and the experiences of students with no…

Hands-on explorations can be extended through interactions with informational texts, enhancing both science learning and literacy development. In this article, the author describes a primary-grade science activity that begins with students examining pine cones and sharing their experiences and observations with peers. The students then generate…

This study examined the effect of graphic organizers on the comprehension of a health education brochure text and compared subjective with objective comprehension measures. Graphic organizers are graphical depictions of relations among concepts in a text. Participants read a brochure text about asthma with and without these organizers, and…

This is a study of the utility of Lexile scores for predicting adequate oral reading accuracy and oral reading rate in a tradebook. A Lexile score is a quantitative measure of readability that can be applied to texts and also a metric for describing reading achievement through the use of standardized reading comprehension measures. Participants…

This paper examines the uniqueness of poetry and classroom methodology as found in children's experiences of hearing, enacting, discussing, and making poems. Poetry offers the peculiar use of language, form, and a fresh look. Poems are useful in the classroom as they are read differently from ordinary text, are read with both the eye and the ear,…

A study used Elizabeth Flynn's interpretive strategies to look at high school students' reading responses. Subjects, 30 high school students, 15 males and 15 females (15 freshmen and 15 seniors) were assigned 3 short stories to read and were then asked to write responses to the stories. Results indicated that: (1) males were much more likely to…

Suggesting that the common classroom practice of literature instruction is antitheoretical and counterproductive, this paper elaborates theories of reading processes, discusses children's responses to literature, and proposes suggestions for classroom use. The first section of the paper outlines what literature instruction is expected to…

Combining academic prose, some narrative, a poem, and some literary criticism, this project paper presents a theoretical framework for the literature base of the curriculum the teacher hopes to make operational on various levels over several years. The first section of the paper discusses the goals and various approaches of multicultural…

The fundamental differences between traditional print and hypertext are likely to cause a shift in pedagogy. Hypertext radically alters traditional hierarchical structures both within writing systems and between author and reader. Hypertext engages users in qualitatively different activities than traditional print. Also, hypertext has been called…

The works of French literary theorists Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and Roland Barthes reflect a view of the text as the primary object of investigation for any discipline in the human sciences. Each of the three has been involved with pedagogical reforms within French cultural institutions: Derrida with the teaching of philosophy, Lacan with…

Schema theorists have advanced the understanding of reading comprehension by describing how prior knowledge can enhance a reader's interaction with the text. Accordingly, comprehension occurs when a reader is able to use prior knowledge and experience to interpret a text's message. Educators and researchers have suggested numerous instructional…

This study investigated the position of illustrations and how they affect the sequential organization of text. The primary purpose was to describe learners' reading sequence and preference for page designs with variations of illustration placement. The 70 subjects were undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in education courses at Memphis…