Describes the author's experiences in her team-taught multiage classroom (grades 4, 5, and 6) coping with the school district's implementation of a basal reader series. Discusses self-imposed changes versus mandated changes, and how she struggles to weave district mandates with her teaching beliefs and practices. (SR)

Basal reading programs not only have tremendous impact on children's learning to read, but they subtly influence children's attitudes toward and understanding of racial differences in society. In this study, teacher manuals from four basal reading programs were examined for grades four, five, and six to learn how ideas for discussing racial and…

A pilot study examined to what degree answers that students supply on basal reader workbook pages are integrated with understanding the words in the story or with understanding the story itself. The sample consisted of 27 workbook pages from 5 fourth-grade basal reading programs with a 1989 copyright date. Two simple content analyses were applied…

This annotated bibliography of material from the ERIC database presents 87 annotations on the topic of the "whole" whole-language debate. Entries in the bibliography are grouped under the topics of philosophy and analysis; the struggle for a definition; comparative analyses of whole language versus traditional approaches; and application…

A study investigated how the beliefs of literacy scholars affect the development of basal reading programs, the roles literacy scholars play in the development of new reading programs, and some of the critical factors that affect the disposition of innovative ideas. Two literacy scholars who had actively collaborated on the development of separate…

A study investigated whether there was a relation between methods of language arts instruction and reading comprehension as measured by the Cloze-procedure. Subjects, 88 third-grade students in 4 classes (2 "traditional" and 2 "whole language") at 2 elementary schools in South Dakota, had their reading comprehension tested 6…

To determine whether the suggested poetry teaching procedures found in the teacher manuals of sixth-grade basal readers reflect the pedagogical procedures suggested by expert opinion and research, an indepth analysis was made of a total of 106 poetry lessons in eight teacher manuals. The poetry lessons were analyzed for the purposes of determining…

This monograph was developed to provide elementary classroom teachers with suggestions for diagnosing several aspects of children's reading abilities and attitudes. The techniques described adhere to diagnostic guidelines set forth in the first part of the monograph and should be useful in regular classroom situations. The remainder of the…

Focusing on the topic of sex stereotypes in children's literature, this annotated bibliography contains references of 28 articles and papers in the ERIC database. The citations include articles discussing sex stereotypes in children's reading materials, basals, picture books, content area materials, and award-winning children's books. Other…

Sentence combining techniques can be used with basal readers to help students develop writing skills. The first technique is addition, characterized by using the connecting word "and" to join two or more base sentences together. The second technique is called "embedding," and is characterized by putting parts of two or more base sentences together…

A study compared the amount of time spent in reading at different grade levels between 1961 and 1985, specifically examining the differences in time allocation practices for formal reading and for other reading, and the ways in which these practices compare in different geographic regions during these years. The 1961 study obtained data from 1,224…

Simple measures of reading, spelling, and written expression were administered to 566 elementary students from the states of Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Washington. Each child was individually administered three reading word lists, three reading passages, two dictated spelling lists, and two story starters. Approximately 25 minutes was needed for…

Five speculations can be made about basal-series reading instruction: if it sells well, it may be bad; basal series may be based on marketing principles rather than educational principles; possession of a basal series by a school district tells llittle or nothing about the instruction in the school district that owns it; stories in basal series…

Teacher questions play a crucial role in affecting the quality of reading instruction, yet, once a child responds to a teacher's question, little is known of the teacher's verbal feedback which provides the pupil with an indication of the accuracy of his or her response. Data were collected from 16 first and third grade teachers during basal…

The edumetric adequacy of curriculum-based reading measures were examined for two basal reading programs. On the basis of reading aloud performance, 91 elementary students were assigned seven instructional placement scores within each basal series. Students also were measured on standardized reading achievement tests. Generally, correlations…