Considers two CD-Rom narratives as examples of high quality, interactive multimedia texts currently available. Looks at how verbal and visual texts draw the reader into an interactive response and the extent to which multimedia elements shape the reader's experience of the text. Bases findings loosely on fieldwork involving responses of four…

Centers on the power of words (words from literature) that have woven themselves into the lives of the author's two daughters. Examines the children's response to literature as they became writers of prose and poetry in elementary school, showing how, when, where, and why the children use literary language to enhance and express their own verbal…

Claims that readers can conduct dialogue with many inner audiences through reading, and readers who manage to do so are likely to develop more sophisticated strategies for learning. Describes different kinds of dialogues, specifically, dialoging with reader's experience, with the author/illustrator, with genre, with problems, and with culture.…

Evaluates the effect of variations in sex-typed behavior in hypothetical peers on children's ratings of friendship. Four reading experiments with a fictional male or female exhibiting certain sex-typed behaviors were used to examine friendship ratings among kindergarten and elementary students. Results show friendship judgments can be influenced…

This close look at a recent research study of the various approaches mothers use in reading to very young children demonstrates the importance of modeling interactive reading to help preschool children connect books to daily experiences. (Author)

Explores how students take what they understand through reading and talking about literature and express their ideas in art, drama, music, or math. Argues that one way learners push their understandings and create more complex meanings is through such transmediation. Offers examples of responding to literature through multiple sign systems. (SR)

Explains the author's organized yet reflective approach to getting her fifth-grade students to read in literature circles. Discusses her slow and thorough process of building a community, and teaching students to respond to literature. Discusses resources for literature circles, and describes the first literature circle in her classroom (after…

This article describes several techniques for structuring storybook reading interactions to best promote emergent literacy development for young children with disabilities. Techniques are presented for increasing the appeal and interactive nature of shared storybook reading and ways to promote children's awareness of naturally occurring literacy…

Examines two urban 10th-grade English classes of ethnically diverse students in which the teachers diversified literature selections for newly designed ethnic literature curricula. Reports the texts students found most memorable and meaningful, and analyzes the values students found in their encounters with these literary works. (RS)

Examines the benefits of reader response by means of student letters to authors. Notes that students involved in response writing become more interested in reading, are more reflective individuals, and more responsible for monitoring and resolving their own questions. (SD)

Book leveling, a way to organize texts to match them with readers, has been widely implemented in primary classrooms. This article questions whether the often excessive attention to leveling leads to the neglect of other factors that influence the reader-text match. The authors present findings from a small study that aimed to determine the…

Literacy education is at a crossroads. While traditional school experiences still prize disembodied experiences of reading print-based texts as the pinnacle of sound education, informal learning experiences provide fruitful examples of the ways that visual texts are read as they are embodied by readers. In this paper I draw from the literacy lives…

Little scholarly attention has been paid to what aspiring principal are actually reading in the preparation courses or whether the texts prepare them for the demands of accountable management. We examine eleven of the thirteen most commonly assigned educational administration texts in a sample of 210 principal preparation syllabi. In the texts…

When the author and her teaching colleague assessed their 7th and 8th grade students' research papers, they realized that although the papers demonstrated proper structure, the students had not gained meaningful understanding of their topics. Although the teachers had carefully prepared students to write, they had not ensured that students had…

Advocates of critical literacy emphasize the empowering role that literacy can and should play in reshaping the environment in which one lives and works. Through mastering the skills of critical literacy, students apply the inquiry process and knowledge gained as a means for political or social action. By gathering appropriate information,…