Analyzes the conversation of sixth grade children in literature response groups. Finds and describes two distinctive gendered styles of talk about literature, the predominate female mode of response being the "discourse of feeling," and the predominate male mode of response being the "discourse of action." Discusses pedagogy…

Investigates the relative contribution and trade-off effects of children's knowledge and reading skill in text comprehension. Finds that domain knowledge and reading skill can be traded in order to achieve similar levels of comprehension. Suggests that reading skill compensates for deficient knowledge and specific knowledge compensates for…

Explores sixth graders' perspectives on the contexts of reading and responding to books in school. Finds children respond to books in patterns specific to school contexts; classroom contexts are socially constructed through children's interactions; and children constructed a community of readers by interacting with one another to respond to books…

Explores aesthetic responses to literature by examining the responses of fifth graders to a variety of books and films. Finds three main characteristics of students' responses: picturing a story in their minds; extending a story or hypothesize about it while reading; and relating associations and feelings evoked while reading and responding.…

Examines the effect of training fourth-grade children to use the regulation strategy of rereading as a means of answering questions about previously read text. Finds that subjects trained in the rereading strategy used the strategy more often and were more likely to produce correct responses than were control subjects. (RS)

Compares fifth-grade teachers' views of teaching a content area literacy lesson with those of literacy professors. Finds that the majority of teachers followed the text closely and took a dominant role as transmitter of knowledge, while professors were not constrained by the text and emphasized a constructivist view of learning. Discusses…

A pilot case study addressed how a reader engages aesthetically with text. The main thrust theoretically is from the notion that "there are possible worlds other than the one we inhabit." Four subjects were chosen out of a total of 63 subjects in grades four through six in an elementary school in Western Canada. Out of the four subjects,…

A study examined the retelling performance of the novice compared with that of the expert and the effect of retelling practice on comprehension for both proficient and less proficient readers. Thirty-six fourth graders (20 proficient and 16 less proficient readers) were randomly assigned to one of four story sessions. Across the four sessions all…

Examines two readers' images of literary characters as a basis for studying text meaning construction. Finds greater variation than commonality between the text and readers, as well as between the readers. Suggests using dialogue and rereadings in instruction to aid in developing and monitoring text understanding. (SR)

Explores reader and text effects on the production of mental imagery during and after reading a poem, a story, and two expository texts. Finds that imagery occurs spontaneously during and after reading all texts and that the production of imagery is affected by both reader and text. (RS)

Two theoretical perspectives are woven together to frame an approach to classroom reading instruction. Viewing reading instruction from a literary perspective and a psychological perspective has the potential to help students understand the distinctions between different text types and the various purposes for reading--information, enjoyment, and…

The study reported in this paper responds to the current movement toward literature-based reading instruction. Five fifth-graders attending a Midwest, urban school participated in the 10-week study in a classroom in which the teacher initiated a literature-based reading program. Data sets included observational field notes, audiotaped lessons,…

A study was conducted to determine how effective webbing--schematic representation of main ideas and supporting details--would be in helping students build bridges between their reading of a text and outlining the material in it. Subjects were 21 sixth grade students, who had been working on outlining and were familiar with its purpose and form.…

Concludes that a cloze strategy, which induced students to integrate text information with prior knowledge, yielded superior gains in comprehension compared to treatments that did not include the strategy. (FL)

Describes a technique that helped less-able fourth grade readers develop a better understanding of story parts and how they fit together. Explains that the technique also improved reading comprehension. (FL)