Describes how a teacher-researcher used knowledge modeling as a basis for assessing students' knowledge. Discusses how the scoring template was created and how the students' recollections were scored. Finds that students with no prior knowledge of a subject were at a disadvantage in the classroom. (PRA)

Suggests that students can improve their memory of Scholastic Aptitude Test vocabulary words by associating the words with corresponding pictures taken from magazines. Finds that long-term recall of words associated with pictures was higher than recall of words not associated with pictures. (RS)

Describes several mental theater exercises that act as a powerful antidote to the confused helplessness that remedial readers often endure. Suggests that these exercises help students to learn new ways to achieve control over their own mental processes during reading. (SR)

Presents a six-step reading/study skills strategy which helps students learn how to approach a new text. (SR)

Argues that the terms "active" and "passive" are commonly used (in conjunction with student behavior during reading) in a way that is misleading and unhelpful. (SR)

Describes using a passage from the book "Raney" by Clyde Edgerton as a read-aloud in social studies and language arts classrooms to explore value conflicts, understand cultures, study dialog and to introduce drama. (SR)

Describes a dozen ways in which reading tests are at variance in their demands with the demands of reading as it occurs in everyday life. Suggests that these sources of variance render reading tests considerably less valid as measures of real world reading behavior than most people want to believe. (RS)

Discusses guidelines for the construction of an informal inventory that focuses on text and reader characteristics and task demands. Gives examples from a sample inventory. Demonstrates how the inventory can be used to plan an instructional program. (RS)

Presents a humorous treatment of trends in the literacy business: blaming somebody else and tackling complex problems as if they were easy. (SR)

Presents three types of simple events knowledge models: (1) a simple list of events; (2) a list of cause-effect sequences; and (3) a list of events that describe a problem and its solution. (SR)

Argues that reading teachers ought to pay as much attention to what students read as to how they read. Illustrates the state of children's publishing with the heavily revised and simplified Hardy Boys series and with sloppy books about dinosaurs. (RS)

Presents the 1991 Young Adults' Choices, the fifth annual list of books preferred by readers in middle schools and junior and senior high schools in the United States. Offers annotations for all 28 books which include a short description of the book and possible uses in the classroom. (SR)

Discusses comments about and responses to an article on semiotics by Donald J. Cunningham in the June 1992 issue of the "Educational Psychology Review." Discusses the semiotic method of juxtaposition, juxtaposing a menace being posed to reading teachers with the menace experienced in W. W. Jacobs' classic ghost story "The Monkey's Paw." (SR)

Describes an in-class activity which determines and discusses individual preferences for learning structures. (SR)

Describes how prior knowledge, current text, future text, and prior text all play a part in knowledge acquisition. States that most content area reading instruction emphasizes only current text. Notes that future columns will address this issue by introducing a method for teaching comprehension of exposition called "knowledge modeling." (SR)