The purpose of this study was to determine whether significant mean differences exist in standardized reading scores between a district that utilized a single basal series to develop reading ability and a district utilizing a tri-basal approach to reading. A cross-section of elementary teachers from two similar suburban school districts that…

Despite the importance of children's literature written by and about people of color, little multiethnic literature is available. However, the situation has improved somewhat. In recent years there has been a greater focus in African-American literature upon folk tales, family stories, family histories, and biographies. Still, books about the…

Five commonly used basal readers from grades one through three were studied to determine how they portrayed and represented older adults. It was hypothesized that older adults would be portrayed as active, contributing, and productive members of society and that they would be represented in the basals in proportion to their numbers in the…

A study was conducted (1) to determine if children select some strategies more frequently than others to comprehend story categories, and (2) to find out if children are able to talk about what they are thinking and doing as they read stories from a basal reader. Subjects, 30 second grade students reading at grade level, were randomly assigned to…

A study analyzed two basal reading series to determine if they depicted realistically the role of the career woman as she exists in society. A list of female careers in the 1989 editions of Houghton-Mifflin and McGraw Hill reading basals for grades 1 to 6 was compared to the career categories of the "United States Bureau of Census,…

A series of nine booklets was developed to help members of textbook adoption committees, teacher educators, inservice leaders, and policymakers gather information, develop evaluation guidelines, and organize their findings as they select new reading programs and evaluate existing ones. Each booklet focuses on a specific aspect of instruction.…

An extensive basal evaluation form--written in a series of 73 questions, each requiring a short narrative response and many with specific references to notes in the appendices--is presented in this paper. The evaluation form is divided into two sections: general questions on teacher's guides and general questions on student books. The questions on…

In a study of how primary teachers assign and monitor independent reading seatwork (workbook) activities, 12 first, second, and third grade teachers were observed during their scheduled reading periods. The seven major observation categories were (1) to whom assigned, (2) when assigned, (3) materials, (4) material focus, (5) instructions for…

A study followed three textbook adoption committees as they evaluated basal reading programs. The committees used "A Guide to Selecting Basal Reading Programs" (developed at the Center for the Study of Reading) to help them evaluate the quality of instruction in existing programs. Case studies of the three committees sought to address the…

A study investigated whether basal reading instruction combined with whole language development instruction would help a group of sixth graders improve in reading skills as measured by the Metropolitan Reading Test. Subjects, 82 students from a metropolitan area in the Southwest, were given pretests and posttests which measured performance in word…

A study investigated whether the workbooks used in the first grades of the Rahway, New Jersey, public schools provided adequate practice in the skills listed in that school district's reading skills array. The four workbooks analyzed were (1) "Phonics We Use: Book A," (2) "The Phonics Workbook: Book A," (3) "Programmed Reading Activities for Books…

Using the "Checklist for Evaluating Sexism in Reading," an analysis was undertaken of the Ginn 360 series and the Ginn 720 series of basal readers for sex stereotypes and related language usage. The main characters and illustrations in approximately ten stories at each reading level were analyzed. Of the 116 stories examined, 49 featured…

The effectiveness of the Three Owls Reading Method was tested, using 53 children from a Head Start program. The Three Owls system combines sight, phonic, and linguistic reading methods with movement and touch modes of instruction. After a pretest for phonic letter recognition, the students were matched and assigned to one of two classes in a…

Three current basal reading series were examined to determine the racial and sexual characteristics of the main characters of the stories and in the illustrations. All of the textbooks from preprimer through the sixth grade level were included in the analysis of the Ginn; Holt, Rinehart, and Winston; and Macmillan series. Eight-hundred sixteen…