As reading is vital to success in life and opens the door to nearly all other learning opportunities, it is essential that educators understand why students with learning how to read. Therefore, it is key for both professionals and researchers to establish their own approaches to assist those with reading difficulties. "Developing Effective…

Teaching English language learners has long presented challenges for teachers tasked with bringing these students to a level of language comprehension comparable to that of native speakers. These challenges and issues can lead to difficulty comprehending core academic topics for those learning the English language. "Optimizing Elementary…

Examines the nature of comprehension, specifically in the area of reading, and offers some techniques for teaching comprehension. (FL)

Provides a rationale for using television as a means of instruction and presents a model for capitalizing on television as a connection to reading. Includes a sample task sheet. (TJ)

Skills development in reading should be balanced with reading, listening, and talking activities which focus on content and themes, so that reading comprehension is also developed. (SJL)

Shows how a scale of questions can be used to develop and assess children's ability to comprehend information presented through different modalities and media. The scale's five levels, which indicate increasing difficulty in comprehension, are association, classification, seriation, integration, and extension. (Author/DB)

Learning disabled children fail to ask for clarification when they do not understand a speaker's message. Failure is due to factors inherent in the children themselves, such as difficulty with question forms, inability to monitor comprehension, and fear as well as poor instructional techniques. Specific teaching strategies can help improve the…

The Ekwall Reading Inventory is a set of reading passages ranging in difficulty from preprimer through ninth-grade level and contains instruments for assessing students' knowledge of letters, phonics, basic sight words, vowel rules and syllable principles, and contractions. The reading passages are designed to measure students' oral and silent…

On the premise that even young students can learn to study effectively, this book provides a framework and activities for the systematic teaching of study skills during the elementary grades. The book is consistent with current research and theory about learning and remembering; concepts such as schema and metacognition pervade the suggested…

Offers techniques teachers can use to incorporate questioning into reading instruction. (FL)

Application of the direct instruction paradigm to reading comprehension skills involves providing a problem-solving strategy through demonstration and modeling, guiding strategy application, and creating opportunities for independent strategy application. Examples of the approach to teach sequential relationships and main idea-supporting…

Twenty games to help elementary school students improve their reading comprehension are described. Ideas involve "scrambled" words, hidden clues, and pantomime. (CJ)

Describes a sequence of instructional strategies for teaching writing, based on schema theory, to help young readers with comprehension and structure. The sequence includes "factstorming," categorizing facts, collaborative drafting, sequencing paragraphs, drafting introductions and conclusions, organizing parts, interpreting similar…

Argues that basing comprehension questions on story grammar will help students develop story schema. (FL)

Reviews instructional materials and teaching guides for reading and comprehension. (HTH)