Describes how as a technical support teacher, the author incorporates computers into an at-risk literacy program. Discusses how computers add excitement. Considers accountability and reflection with the online program. Concludes that web reading is a new skill, but familiar reading strategies can ease the transition. (SG)

Notes that a text map is an instructional approach designed to help students gain fluency in reading content area materials. Discusses how the goal is to teach students about the important features of the material and how the maps can be used to build new understandings. Presents the procedures for preparing and using a text map. (SG)

Addresses how a reader draws upon three major sources of information, or cueing systems: graphophonic, syntactic, and semantic. Discusses how effective reading instruction, at all levels, fosters independence in the use of these cueing systems that allow developing readers to remain squarely in control of their own learning. Presents a teaching…

Investigates main idea instruction in three basal reading series. Finds statistically significant differences in main idea instruction for the parameters "main idea task" and "acknowledgement of strategies mediating main idea task." Determines that basal reader materials rarely encourage students to monitor their main idea…

Describes a 10-lesson instructional program for teaching students to think aloud during reading as a means to help them monitor reading comprehension and to address comprehension breakdowns. Presents a sample lesson, and offers suggestions for how teachers might adapt, modify, or extend think alouds in a classroom reading program or in content…

Describes a strategy, called "circle of questions" in which students worked together in small groups and in a large group to actively construct their own questions about a topic and then explore the text to find answers. (SR)

Provides 11 annotations from the ERIC database of recent reports and conference papers that address the relationship of phonics to beginning reading. (MG)

Presents a strategy called "Getting to Know My Character" that is useful for helping young and at-risk readers recognize information about story characters to increase their reading comprehension. (SR)

Ponders the dilemmas of teaching and learning how to learn from reading (using the "fortunately/unfortunately" pattern from Remy Charlip's book "Fortunately.") (SR)

Proposes four subcategories of alphabet books for use in upper elementary classrooms: enumerative, juxtapositional, narrative, and artistic. Characteristics of each type are described that encourage different kinds of reader involvement and examples of classroom uses and strategies are suggested for specific titles. (LRW)

Identifies strategies reading tutors and struggling readers used while reading electronic books. Finds that tutors primarily used nine types of strategic comprehension prompts, two of them unique to reading electronic books. Finds that the most prevalent strategy used was to prompt tutees to activate the context elaboration features (multisensory…

Argues that the Internet is a valuable information source for teachers. Demonstrates this by presenting an online Internet conversation between three teachers using a teacher "chatroom" to explore an educational issue (how to help students learn to read and appreciate informational text) with other like-minded educators. (SR)

Gives a brief history of miscue analysis, and then describes miscue analysis procedures, how to code and analyze miscues, and the reader's knowledge of the language cuing systems. Includes an appendix of markings for miscue analysis. (SR)

Finds: grade 3 children who were taught the strategy without monitoring instruction were more successful than control children, whereas Grade 4 and Grade 5 students benefited from instruction only when encouraged to monitor their performance; and grade 3 and grade 4 students transferred the strategy to an unfamiliar informational book. (RS)

Focusing on the teaching of comprehension strategies, this paper describes studies designed to identify settings in which effective strategies instruction was being carried out and details the conclusions that can be drawn from the studies. The paper begins with a description of comprehension strategies instruction in the 1970s and 1980s. The…