Examines the effectiveness of the basal reader selection process in one midwestern school district. Concludes that an effective basal reader selection process is one which results in teachers identifying materials that help bring about the type of reading instruction they seek for their classrooms. (MG)

It is time to stop blaming children's nonreading on innate intelligence, ethnicity, socioeconomic background, TV-watching, or other factors beyond teachers' control. Too many schools are boring kids with dull texts and basal readers. Kids read about topics that interest them and particularly enjoy mystery, adventure, humor stories. Matching…

Describes an approach to reading instruction that uses children's literature to complement basal reading instruction to create a literacy environment that teaches children to develop a lifelong love of reading. (MG)

Describes one way that an adopted speller can be adapted so that it contributes to the overall spelling program via a spelling workshop. Discusses daily happenings in the spelling workshop. (SR)

Suggests that many "writing disabilities" derive from too little time allocated to writing instruction or from instruction inadequately designed for learning needs of students. Reviews characteristics of students with learning disabilities. Recommendations are given for effectively teaching writing to a broad range of students. Discusses…

Investigated the portrayal of gender characteristics in elementary school textbooks, particularly masculine and feminine stereotypes, examining first, third, and fifth grade literature textbooks using an evaluative instrument based on the Bem Sex Role Inventory. Despite publisher's guidelines and Title IX, males are still portrayed primarily in a…

Describes how published basal reading programs can be adapted to provide guided reading instruction in K-2 classrooms where large numbers of books are not available but basal stories are accessible. Describes and presents results from a project to assign levels of difficulty to stories in five nationally published basal reading programs. (SR)

Examines the potential for vocabulary learning using a corpus of 42 grade readers from one series of graded readers (seven at each of six levels in the series). It was found that in order to have 95% coverage of the running words at a level in the series, it was necessary to already know the vocabulary of the current level in the scheme.…

Investigates two types of texts (a reading scheme book and a children's literature text) to see how the reader is constructed by the text, and what kind of reading support is offered. Finds that the literary text offers more reading support than the supposedly carefully constructed reading scheme book, which constructs a passive reader to whom…

California and Texas mandate 75% to 80% decodable texts for first-grade reading programs, yet these percentages have no empirical base. This study examines the text selections in 6 first-grade programs from the perspective of lexical, semantic, and syntactic features. The composition of text differed across the 6 programs with respect to length,…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of participation in Read 180, a teacher-mediated, computer-mediated reading instruction program, on the reading proficiency of 4th and 5th grade English Language Learners. The students who participated in the Read 180 program scored below the 25th percentile on the Florida Comprehensive…

Children's literature and the social studies need to be integrated so that holism is involved in pupil learning. A variety of kinds of reading materials should be available to learners so that each social studies unit might be meaningful and interesting. Individual differences among pupils' abilities and achievements must be adequately provided…

A study determined the relationship between basal illustrations and contextual meaning. Five basals were analyzed to determine the percentage of illustration miscues appearing in each story. The basals chosen were from Silver Burdett and Ginn, Houghton Mifflin, Scott Foresman, Holt Rinehart and Winston, and D.C. Heath and Company. Results…

A study investigated whether trade books labeled "easy reader" consistently conform to specific sight word lists and to what degree the vocabulary in those books matches that in K-2 basals. Ten "easy reader" books were chosen at random from each of three publishers. Three popular sight word lists were matched separately to…

A total reading program must provide for the sequential development of reading skills and the deliberate development of interest in reading. The prime means of accomplishing the goals of skills and interest in reading is use of a basal reading program along with independent reading. The basal reader is designed to provide for the sequential…