The current study focused on the required Grade 4 reading textbooks published by Mainland China's People's Education Press. Using the construction-integration model (C-I; Kintsch in Psychol Rev 95:163-182, 1988; Discourse Process 39:125-112, 2005) as the theoretical framework, we analyzed the texts and activities in the textbooks on the following domains: (1) genre, (2) top-level structure (TLS), the C-I model activated in a (3) passage comprehension and (4) a word comprehension activity, and (5) whether the activities addressed the TLS to help students integrate prior knowledge under appropriate schemata. Our results suggested that among the 63 texts, only 2 had a comparison text structure. Also, only 20% of the 125 activities addressed a situation model of comprehension. Moreover, only 10 word comprehension activities were included in the textbooks (five promoted word comprehension in a situation model). Lastly, while many texts contained a problem and solution or cause and effect structure, most activities did not help students to identify the correct TLS. Therefore, the textbook design was not aligned with the C-I theory to promote higher-order reading comprehension skills. We suggested that textbook designers should consider a balanced representation of different TLSs, and teachers need to provide other activities that can guide students to comprehend a word and text in a TLS-appropriate situation model.