The most successful approach for promoting interactions with books and fostering voluntary reading habits in the early childhood classroom involves daily reading aloud of storybooks by teachers, a classroom library, availability of trade books for children's use, and encouragement of children's emergent readings of storybooks. (BB)

Describes the effect on junior high remedial readers of a reading workshop applying principles from Nancie Atwell's "In the Middle," including self-selection of adolescent literature books, silent reading, dialogue journal writing, and sharing work with others. Augments the workshop with "mini-lessons" on elements of reading…

Readability formulas applied to materials for hearing-impaired students do not account for important factors in reader-writer-text interaction. Factors include the reader's purpose, cultural background, and extent of background knowledge; writers' assumptions about readers; the text's structure, content, and cohesion; and the role of…

Describes a study conducted to investigate whether text-interactive instruction improved reading comprehension and writing performance of community college students enrolled in developmental reading courses. Students were taught to predict, infer, analyze, and evaluate while reading and to use their experiences and embedded textual cues to give…

Sample materials designed to enable advanced learners to read more effectively for academic purposes are presented that focus learners' attention on the role of various cohesive devices in relating parts of a text. Discovery exercises applied to an authentic text show learners ways the devices can help them understand the text. (13 references)…

Presents a method of teaching liturgical texts, related to the lectionary. Describes Bernard L. Lee's shared homily method based on Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutical movements. Illustrates how Lee's homiletic method can be adapted into a disciplined conversation with the text for use in other religious instruction. (DB)

Explores the effects of the use of aesthetic and efferent stances in response to literature with 43 fourth graders, 47 sixth graders, and 40 eighth graders. Finds use of an aesthetic stance is associated with higher levels of personal understanding and the level of understanding increases with grade level. (MG)

Fifty-six field-dependent and 55 field-independent students in grades 6 through 8 were assessed on reading comprehension tasks varying in memory load and cognitive restructuring requirements. Field-independent readers outperformed field-dependent readers on tasks with high memory demands and requirements for efficient restructuring. (SLD)

Describes how the authors have facilitated student-led literature discussions in their second- and third-grade classrooms. Outlines the basic organizational structure that fosters response-driven conversations about books. Illustrates the various ways students speak meaningfully with each other about the literature (including inferential…

Discusses Kenneth Burke's notion of "symbolic action" as applied to texts and how it mediates perceptions. Discusses some ways to teach students to get outside their own perspectives and notice what they are overlooking (thus teaching Burke's "perspective by incongruity"). (SR)

Considers two CD-Rom narratives as examples of high quality, interactive multimedia texts currently available. Looks at how verbal and visual texts draw the reader into an interactive response and the extent to which multimedia elements shape the reader's experience of the text. Bases findings loosely on fieldwork involving responses of four…

Centers on the power of words (words from literature) that have woven themselves into the lives of the author's two daughters. Examines the children's response to literature as they became writers of prose and poetry in elementary school, showing how, when, where, and why the children use literary language to enhance and express their own verbal…

Claims that readers can conduct dialogue with many inner audiences through reading, and readers who manage to do so are likely to develop more sophisticated strategies for learning. Describes different kinds of dialogues, specifically, dialoging with reader's experience, with the author/illustrator, with genre, with problems, and with culture.…

Evaluates the effect of variations in sex-typed behavior in hypothetical peers on children's ratings of friendship. Four reading experiments with a fictional male or female exhibiting certain sex-typed behaviors were used to examine friendship ratings among kindergarten and elementary students. Results show friendship judgments can be influenced…

This close look at a recent research study of the various approaches mothers use in reading to very young children demonstrates the importance of modeling interactive reading to help preschool children connect books to daily experiences. (Author)