William S. Gray is considered by many literacy authorities today to have been the premier reading educator of the last century. He was most noted for his extensive research and writing in many aspects of literacy. The following interview with Gray was originally published in "School and Community," a Missouri state teachers' journal, in 1949.…

Describes a project that heightens teacher awareness of research on four types of beneficial classroom practices: (1) use of wait time when asking students questions, (2) attention to academic learning time, (3) use of prompting or cuing, and (4) use of reinforcement when questioning students. (SKC)

Outlines Teaching Reading as Conversation (TRAC), a program that teaches reading in an environmental context, with immersion techniques, as though it were a foreign language. (DF)

Describes a metacognitive study method, LETME, designed to help students manage the entire study process by facilitating the understanding, selection, organization, retention, and analysis of information from expository text. (DF)

Describes the development of a 99-word multiple meaning word list and offers activities designed to develop children's knowledge of multiple meaning words. (FL)

Considers three issues related to the conduct of research into reading problems of the elderly: (1) the lack of federal funding of literacy research concerning the elderly, (2) differences between conducting research with school-aged populations and with the elderly, and (3) problems encountered in testing elderly individuals. (GT)

Argues that students' problems in reading content area materials can best be solved by helping them make effective use of their skills through skill-centered instruction. Describes the purpose and rationale for an approach involving the "glossing" of expository text--the addition of intratext notations to direct students' attention while they…

Describes a week-long library skills unit for disadvantaged high school students, noting that much of the success of the program rests in the use of a library usage game--in which students are pitted against the staff--at the end of the unit. Describes the game in detail. (GT)

In this interview, a tutor in a correctional reading program, himself a former drug addict and jail prisoner, describes his childhood failures in reading, the public shool's failure to help him and other Spanish-speaking students, his eventual reading success in the jail reading program, and factors that account for the program's success. (GT)

Describes a middle school reading program designed to motivate students to engage in recreational reading by forming teams, reading a selected group of books, and competing in a quiz game called "Story Bowl," which draws its questions from the books. Reports that children read more and discuss more. (RS)

Describes reading center activities designed to make reading fit into the real world and the real world fit into reading. Uses a whole language approach both to promote ideas that are novel to students and to promote excellent children's literature. (RS)

Presents reading assessment ideas that have provided some useful affective insights with middle school students. Presents assessment ideas related to conative factors, an emerging area of research closely related to affect. (RS)

Presents summaries of empirical studies of kindergartners, fifth graders, high school students, and college students, which suggest that people use stereotypes and gender-based identification in encoding, retrieving, and making inferences. Discusses results of qualitative research on differences in male and female responses to literary texts.…

Reports classroom observations of Integrated Thematic Instruction (ITI) as implemented in a southern California elementary school. Discusses the complex set of requirements that curriculum integration must meet to fulfill its considerable promise. (RS)

Relates the process of tutoring a gifted high school student. Asserts that his problems are not unique: bright students often have the same difficulty learning from expository text as average or below average students, and they can be as disorganized as everyone else. Suggests that high schools should offer instruction in content area reading.…