A study was conducted to verify the findings of previous research showing that a difference in recall of superordinate and subordinate level concepts existed among various reading ability groups within the same grade of elementary school children. Instead of especially constructed passages used in the previous studies, the study used actual elementary school textbook materials. Subjects, 81 fifth grade students, identified as either above average, average, or below average readers, read a passage from a science text determined to be at the fifth grade reading level. The passage contained one superordinate concept, three coordinate concepts, and twenty-four subordinate concepts. After they had read the passages, the subjects wrote all they could recall about it, and these protocols were analyzed by two different raters. Results showed that above average and average readers had significantly greater recall of concepts at the coordinate and subordinate levels and had greater sensitivity to the coordinate concepts than did the below average students. The results (1) suggest that reading instruction should emphasize identification of supporting main ideas as well as the major idea and relevant details, and (2) reinforce both the need to teach outlining as a study skill and the use of syntactic webbing activities to help students identify relationships between ideas. (FL)