Reading Improvement Through Art (RITA) program is an interdisciplinary approach to literacy that blends visual art with reading comprehension, evaluated in nine New York City urban high schools. 240 problem readers participating in the pilot program were pre- and post-tested in the Fall 1975 and Spring 1976 semesters. The testing showed the 9th…

Examples from the evaluation of a program in which data collection systems were developed jointly by the program's staff and evaluators are described. The Louisiana SPUR (Special Plan Upgrading Reading) Project was evaluated by the Louisiana Department of Education Bureau of Evaluation. SPUR involves 63 of the state's 66 public school systems and…

The measured effects of captioned television upon the sight vocabulary, comprehension, and oral reading performance of 77 learning disabled students from 4 Maryland schools suggest that both captioned television with sound and conventional television enhance the reading skills of learning disabled students. (7 references) (MLF)

The relationship of minutes of reading instruction to the gains in reading performance for 3,374 elementary school children shows consistent positive findings between large- and small-group classroom instruction and reading gains. Some of the negative results for individualized instruction may be due to school assignment practices. (Author/MLF)

Effects of instructional complexity and role reciprocity within classwide peer tutoring (CWPT) programs were examined with a total of 119 students (learning disabled, low achieving, or normally achieving) in grades 2 through 5. Students in all CWPT conditions outperformed controls on a reading fluency measure; however only those in CWPT with role…

Reports on a study of the effects of participation in public library summer reading programs on children's reading skills. Results on a standardized test administered to 279 students in grades 1-5 in May and September are analyzed and compared for participants and nonparticipants in the summer reading program. (MES)

Reports that story-type chapters with dialogues, presented to lower secondary pupils (N=546) before they read a bio-technical text: (1) increased their objective understanding in terms, bio-technical instruction, and sequences in a process; and (2) enhanced their subjective assessment of the ease and attractiveness of the bio-technical text. (DH)

The progress of 30 mildly handicapped students in grades 3-8 was monitored simultaneously in alternative levels of a reading curriculum, and students' slopes of improvement and variability of performance were compared. Regardless of the level of the curriculum in which progress was assessed, the slope of improvement was similar over time.…

A pilot study examined the effects of improved breakfast nutrition on students' academic achievement. Participants were 142 intermediate school children who usually ate breakfast in school. All children were given the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests, Form 1, Levels A-D, and were ranked according to their total reading scores. The experimental and…

Describes two experiments which demonstrate improvement in reading speed as a result of an uncomplicated BASIC computer program which automatically assigns phrase structure to grammatical sentences to produce syntactically formatted text. Both experiments indicate poor readers are aided by this type of format. (MBR)

The study investigated retention of gains in reading/language skills after one year by 378 eighth-grade students in 18 health studies classrooms. Six classrooms were assigned to each of three groups, two experimental and one control, taught by health science teachers who were: (1) trained in reading/language techniques; (2) not trained in…

Two experimental groups of fourth graders received instruction in the use of graphic organizers. Subjects in the control group were taught by the reading-recitation method. Graphic organizer instruction improved students' ability to read and retain social studies information. (RM)

Evaluation of literature-based and traditional basal reading series for sensitivity of repeated curriculum-based measurement with 48 third-grade students found that passage probes from the literature-based series were less sensitive to indexing growth over time than were passage probes from the traditional basal series. (Author/DB)

A study examined (1) relationships between background knowledge and reading passage comprehension, (2) the reliability of a passage-specific background knowledge measure used as the knowledge criterion, (3) the effect of a prereading language and concept organizer activity on available background knowledge, and (4) the effect of that prereading…

Two student self-management techniques, student charting and student selection of instructional activities, were applied to ongoing data-based program modification. Forty-two elementary school resource room students were assigned randomly (within teacher) to one of three treatment conditions: Teacher Chart-Teacher Select Instructional Activities…