This article discusses a professional development text by Ruby Payne that claims to inform teachers about the lives and minds of children from poor households. We use Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1995; Gee, 2005; Rogers, Malancharuvil-Berkes, & Mosley, 2005) to examine how the author enlists readers' participation in deficit…

This study emanates from an assumption that the skill of evaluating sources is placed in a complicated field, where an old academic tradition is paired with a contemporary emphasis on the possibilities and risks with modern sources. The aims of the study is to contribute with a description and analysis of these views as they are expressed in…

This article features FAST-R, or Formative Assessments of Student Thinking in Reading, a new assessment tool that measures critical-reading skills. FAST-R was developed by the the nonprofit Boston Plan for Excellence (BPE), a local education foundation, to provide teachers with information about what students are thinking when they try to find…

This essay is just one story in the ongoing conversation of how to approach teaching indigenous literatures in colonial educational institutions. Through sharing her experiences in teaching Richard Van Camp's "The Lesser Blessed," the author hopes to reveal the power of this particular text and the way its effects on students who…

Writers carefully include critical information in the opening lines of their chapters, but students often gloss over these beginning sentences, missing information that could help them better comprehend the text. To address this concern, the authors created a strategy that prompts students to examine the opening lines of chapters, helping readers…

The author examined the techniques of 3 middle school struggling readers to use silence to protect or promote their specific identities as readers in and out of school. J. Gee's (2002) theory of discursive identity framed this article. Results challenge the ways that teachers and researchers typically think of struggling readers. Rather than being…

Claims that Tom is a character eminently suited to the multiplicity and subjectivity arguments of reader response criticism (RRC), that meaning is a relation between an author, a text, and a reader, not an object, as New Criticism held, and not a procedure, as RRC assumes. (RAE)

Argues that teachers of writing are more concerned about good writing than about good writers, and that they should instead strive to improve the experience of writing, even if that means throwing out the piece of writing produced. (JAD)

Examines ways in which visible language works with or against an accompanying image to produce desired effects on a reader or spectator and investigates the role that fiction and myth play in life, using a book cover and comic strip illustrations as examples. (DF)

Through a bilingual reading of Beckett's "Mal vu mal dit," the illusion of painted relief for printed letters is created. Colors manifest themselves through the continual process of translation. The French translation adds color to the black and white English text. (DF)

Presents a teacher's method of staying in touch with his students' cognitive development. Offers his outline of four cognitive levels, with definitions, and types of student responses (from sixth- and eighth-grade students). (SR)

Praises librarians who, with skill and affection, bring readers to books that help them shape and understand their lives. Quotes excerpts from poetry and prose with sometimes surprising images of librarians. (SR)

Contends that the ancient Babylonian epic poem "Gilgamesh" makes room for elements that call into question the very nature of heroic. Notes that the opening passage of the poem informs readers that it is going to foster elements contrary to expectations. Provides examples of such surprises. (PM)

Examines change and variation in the design of non-fiction texts which have a junior-age readership. Argues that different forms of presentation of non-fiction offer different ways of reading non-fiction texts, which as yet are neither fully described nor recognized. Suggests that non-fiction texts can be more or less firmly orientated towards…

Considers how scientific texts are resistant to scrutiny by rhetorical critics because of the recalcitrance of nature, the exegetical equality of scientific communication, and the institutionally driven nature of scientific text production. Argues that none of these differences between scientific and public texts bars a rhetorical reading.…