In an instructional study, teachers were taught to make decisions about reading instruction while simultaneously following directives about how to use a mandated basal reading textbook. This article examines how such directives influenced elementary school teachers' perceptions of their role as reading teachers. (Author/NH)

Describes three pairs of lessons in which the same skill taught to the same kinds of students by identically trained teachers result in noticeable differences in what students remember following instruction. Focuses on how student understanding of lesson content is influenced by relatively subtle differences in what a teacher says. (HOD)

Six first- and second-grade teachers were observed while teaching their students how to read in order to examine the methods and rationale they employed for assistance during reading group instruction. (MP)

Observations of second- and third-grade teachers who participated in a staff development program illustrate teachers' difficulties with getting low achievers to focus on and understand the process of being strategic and with using literacy tasks to teach strategy. (BB)

Based upon teacher interviews and classroom observations, outlines a continuum of nine "points of progress" teachers seem to go through in learning to teach strategies to their lowest achieving students: confusion and rejection; teacher-controlled strategies; trying out; modeling process into content; "the wall"; "over the hump"; "I don't quite…