The task of unscrambling and reordering the sentences for six stories was completed by 455 third, sixth, and ninth grade students from three cultural groups (black, Anglo, and Hispanic) in a study of how sociocultural differences in story schemata affect reading comprehension. The results showed that the greatest effects were for grade level and reading achievement. There were also effects that suggest the three cultural groups used somewhat different strategies for choosing initial and final sentences and for making narratives internally cohesive. Social class, sex of student, and school location (suburban versus inner city) did not appear to affect the task. (Author/RL)