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Currently there is an active and produc tive dialogue about what constitutes appropriate literacy instruction (eg, Aaron, Chali, Durkin, Goodman, & Strickland, 1990; Hoffman, 1989) which is resulting in attempts to structure more holistic literacy instructional approaches. These ap proaches are many and varied and include programs such as whole language programs, literature-based instruction, and content read ing programs. At the same time, teachers and researchers are rethinking many of the com ponents of traditional instruction, such as that of vocabulary instruction (Baumann & Ka meenui, 1991; Beck & McKeown, 1991; Nagy & Herman, 1987) in the light of these new perspectives.

How to use the information generated by these dialogues to make sensible change while continuing to offer effective instruction is every teacher's challenge. One way to ap proach this task is to extract shared principles from different …