Comprehension instruction in current basal reader series
Dolores Durkin · Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) · 1990
A casual skimming of the manuals accompanying new basal reader series is enough to reveal unprecedented attention to comprehension.The generous coverage meant that when a decision was made to learn about comprehension instruction in current manuals, limitations had to be placed on what would be scrutinized.Two topics were selected for study, main ideas and story structure.It was thought that the main idea instruction would shed light on how current basal programs deal with expository text.It was further assumed that recommendations for teaching about story components would reveal what the programs do with the structure of stories.To achieve the two objectives, Kindergarten through Grade 6 manuals in five basal series were read page by page.