The electronic text program described in this lesson plan guides students to compare and contrast the characteristics of electronic text with the characteristics of traditionally printed text, gaining a deeper understanding of how to navigate and comprehend information found on the Internet. During a 30 minute and a 45 minutes lesson, students…

This book guides students through the entire writing process--prewriting, writing, and rewriting--developing an easy-to-use, step-by-step technique for writing the types of documents they will encounter on the job. It engages students in the writing process and encourages hands-on application as well as discussions about ethics, audience…

Describes a methodology for teaching the complex prose structures common to nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature. Identifies modifying structures, conditional structures, and periodic sentences as stumbling blocks for students. Argues that students should be taught the effect of these structures on the meaning of both the sentence and the…

This article suggests ways that teachers can use videotape recordings to improve listening skills and enhance text structure instruction in the intermediate grades. Students develop story maps for narrative videos and texts and create organizational pattern guides for expository videos and texts. Lists of suggested videos and children's books are…

Discusses the Question-Answer Relationship (QAR) that is an instructional activity designed to help students work with a standard feature of reading: answering questions based on a text. Asserts that the QAR strategy has tremendous potential to help students learn important social studies content through the study of children's literature. (CMK)

This introductory lesson exposes students to a variety of online texts about Anne Frank and the Holocaust prior to more extensive study of these topics. Students are encouraged to cooperatively examine Internet sites as a primary source of information, and then share their impressions and opinions of the various sites. During the two 40-minute…

Explains the details of a method of teaching text structure that proved successful in improving both reading comprehension and summary writing of fifth graders. Reports that students quickly learned how to attend to and remember main ideas from problem-solution passages in their textbooks and how to write summaries. (MG)

This article presents and illustrates four text structure maps to help poor readers in comprehension. These patterns are: (1) the descriptive or thematic map; (2) the sequential episodic map; (3) the comparative and contrastive map; and (4) the problem/solution map. Guidelines are offered for sequencing instruction in the text maps. (DB)

These instructor's materials consist of a handbook directed to the teacher and 33 worksheets teachers can use with adult students in order to use the cloze procedure to assess how readily they can read materials of differing complexity. The handbook introduces the materials by considering such questions as What is meant by reading?, How could…

Reflecting the concerns of researchers and practitioners about children's text comprehension, this book defines and provides examples of narrative and expository text and describes research-based strategies for helping children comprehend these two types of text. The book contains the following chapters: (1) "Research on Stories: Implications…

A list of grievances comprises the longest portion of the Declaration of Independence, but the source of the document's power is its firm philosophic foundation. In this unit, the teacher can capitalize on the propensity to complain to increase student awareness of the precedents behind the Declaration of Independence. The unit can help students…

This article is based on the hypothesis that Reading Recovery teachers sometimes mistakenly reduce or withdraw their support once children have developed strategic processing capabilities and gained higher levels of text reading. It discusses structural characteristics of higher level texts and considers several types of processing demands…

Describes a method content teachers in the middle and upper grades can use to teach their traditional content topics with a focus on the content information, the content's organizational plan, and strategies to help students "deep process" the content. Describes the three-stage implementation. Notes evidence that applying and practicing the…

Connecting visual and print literacies in the classroom can bridge distances in students' experiences, because all literacies are complementary and interdependent. This article discusses this rationale for connecting students' communication experiences in and out of classrooms to foster relevant literacies needed in contemporary society. Next it…

Shows how to help students fill in textual "gaps" to interact more fully with contemporary texts, classics, and myths. Presents examples of this approach for studying (1) Shakespeare's "Hamlet" with Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead"; and (2) George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion" with the…