This book is intended for researchers and teachers interested in literacy and concerned about classrooms as a context for literacy activity and learning. The book contains the following chapters: (1) "What It Means to be Literate about Classrooms" (Lyn Corno); (2) "Beyond Access: An Ethnographic Study of Reading and Writing in a Seventh Grade Classroom" (David Bloome); (3) "Reading Ability Groups as Literacy Communities" (Hilda Borko and Margaret Eisenhart); (4) "Sociality and Cognition in Collaborative Computer Writing" (James L. Heap); (5) "Describing Classroom Storybook Reading" (William H. Teale and others); (6) "Text Comprehension in Functional Task Domains" (Carl Frederiksen); (7) "Giving Formal Definitions: An Oral Language Correlate of School Literacy" (Catherine Snow and others); (8) "Exploring the Cognitive Consequences of Variations in the Social Fabric of Classroom Literacy Events" (Robert J. Tierney and Theresa Rogers); (9) "The Acquisition of Literacy in Religious and Secular Schools" (Thomas Eisemon and Martin Hallett); (10) "Social Semiotics: A New Model for Literacy Education" (Jay L. Lemke); and (11) "Literacy as Conversation: Classroom Talk as Text Building" (Patricia Stock and Jay Robinson). (MS)