In his ethnographic study of junior high school literacy activities, David Bloome found support for four theoretical constructs of the student-text interaction: (1) education is a process of cultural transmission; (2) reading is defined in terms of the sociocultural context in which it occurs; (3) the interpretation of behavior and of signs occurs within a social context; and (4) the development of cognitive skills needs to be viewed in terms of the social and cultural context in which development is manifested. To determine whether Bloome's constructs apply equally well to senior high schol students, students from a largely white, middle class high school were observed in the hallways, classrooms, and library. Observations of the different postures students assumed while reading within a class and in the library suggested that students approached reading not only as an intellectual function, but also as a social ritual. Students engaged in serious study, for example, tended to separate and assume the "isolated reading" position, indicating their awareness of this phenomenon. Several incidents of students "removing" themselves from a boring class by reading showed that students were able to use nonverbal clues to construct a reading context. (Diagrams of student-text relationships are appended.) (MM)