Catherine and other interested parties: The "Shannon" I referred to in my posting is our fellow Lrnasster Shannon Gadbois, who recently posted an email stating that "reading is the basis for all learning" and invited us to comment. The statement struck a chord based on my recent teaching experience. Does anyone else out there know anything empirical to support this? I have mentioned the idea to other colleagues and they all feel it resonates with their experience as well. Lately I have been looking at references on metacognition in reading (the work of Ann Brown, Annemarie Palincsar, and Scott Paris) and they have done an excellent job discussing the thinking behind reading; but what about the reading behind thinking? An interesting avenue for more research? Annette Gourgey