Research suggests that children's understanding of text can be improved by the explicit teaching of those comprehension strategies that are used implicitly by skilled readers, particularly the use of self-regulating strategies to generate questions about text. This study of the teaching of comprehension in 51 London Key Stage 2 classrooms explores…

Discusses ways to teach modern plays and poetry, using a reader response approach that makes the works more accessible to students. (HTH)

Presents three strategies for teaching the personal, operational, and cultural dimensions of literary response. (MM)

Offers a method of using reader response theory that emphasizes the expectations about a text and how those expectations are fulfilled or deflated. Specifically, students read traditional fables, fairy tales, and parables, and compare them to contemporary works such as Kafka's "Metamorphosis" and Marquez's "The Very Old Man With Enormous Wings."…

Presents the background, design, research, and possible uses for the Cloze Story Map, which combines the elements of cloze with a story-mapping strategy to represent the structure and semantic content of both narrative and expository text. (FL)

Provides a theoretical framework for thinking about how students read literature through the notions of envisionment-building and stories. Discusses possibilities for instruction. (MG)

Reviews "How Porcupines Make Love II," the sequel on teaching a response-centered literature curriculum. Finds it to be a lively, engaging, provocative text, one that includes workable hints for classroom practice. (MG)

Discusses a textbook annotation strategy. Examines the effectiveness and efficiency of the strategy. Finds that training students to annotate text enables them to perform effectively over time. Presents practical teaching suggestions for working with different types of students. (RS)

Develops an Information Text Reading Activity (ITRA), a conceptual framework for presenting reading lessons that will engage students in reading informational text actively. Notes that the framework provides a basis for selecting and evaluating instructional activities and assists the teacher in moving students toward independence in learning. (RS)

This article explores the potential and limitations of Louise Rosenblatt's account of aesthetic reading as a basis for understanding the relationship between literary experience and spiritual development. It does so by examining a particular act of reading involving a poem by Ernst Jandl in the light of Rosenblatt's account of "aesthetic reading"…

Since its publication in 2000, Strategies That Work has become an indispensable resource for teachers who want to explicitly teach thinking strategies so that students become engaged, thoughtful, independent readers. In this revised and expanded edition, the authors have added twenty completely new comprehension lessons, extending the scope of the…

Because of difficult academic vocabulary and ambiguous explanations of many concepts, science texts are hard for students to read and understand. To become skilled readers of content material, students need to learn the meanings of the academic science vocabulary. They must also be able to understand the concepts presented in the textbook.…

Listening to students in productive ways seems to be at the core of teaching practices aligned with the basic tenets of the constructivist world view. We present a definition for productive ways of listening, discuss the challenges involved in implementing it, and propose a way to support the "decentering" needed to learning to listen for teacher…

Performing text in the form of choral reading, rap, reader's theatre, and/or simulations offers students a powerful vehicle for understanding and recalling key concepts and significant details culled from textual materials. Creating a script, poem, or lyrics to perform requires repeated readings of a text, a practice that increases participants'…

A three-stage lesson sequence that used story grammars to teach plot development has been proved successful with a group of eight above average third grade students reading Deborah and James Howe's "Bunnicula." The first stage was a training unit designed to familiarize children with a typical story grammar's parts: a theme and plot…