Beginning with a series of interactive exercises, this book leads readers through the thinking processes and linguistic systems that students use to build their understanding of text. Through a review of these systems, the book then shows how to assess students' reading ability. It then presents an easy-to-use, step-by-step diagnostic procedure, including a retelling guide, which helps to identify and then maximize the student's specific strengths. The book also offers ideas on how to help students develop the self-monitoring strategies needed to keep track of their own meaning-making process as they read. Chapters in the book are: (1) Honoring What Readers Do; (2) How Readers Use Language; (3) Three Cueing Systems; (4) Aren't Errors Bad? Some Underlying Principles of Miscue Analysis; (5) Choosing Reading Material and Getting Started; (6) Recording What Readers Do; (7) Conducting Good Retellings; (8) Coding Miscues: Procedures for Classroom Use; (9) A Portrait of the Reader; (10) What's Next for This Reader? From Miscue Analysis to Instruction; and (11) Miscue Analysis in the Life of the Classroom. Appendixes contain interview questions, a short story, a retelling, a sample retelling form, a miscue inventory, a coded story, a coding sheet, and checklists. (Contains 49 references.) (RS)