The purpose of this naturalistic experiment was to discover the operative elements of an evidence-based reform effort that accounted for growth in student achievement. The reform was implemented in 13 schools around the United States over the course of two years. The authors studied the impact of both school-level programmatic elements and…

Reviews representative instructional studies of inference training, reciprocal teaching, and process training. Discusses both the concept of explicit comprehension instruction and potential difficulties in classroom implementation. Raises two important curricular concerns. (NH)

To improve the inferential comprehension of good and poor fourth-grade readers (n=40), teachers provided instruction in (1) drawing inferences between new and existing knowledge, (2) discussing, prior to reading, events similar to the story, and (3) providing inferential questions to discuss after reading. (Author/PN)

Research in reading comprehension was reviewed in order to characterize, summarize, and evaluate its contribution to principles of instructional practice. Studies were divided into four major research traditions: existential descriptions, existential proofs, pedagogical experiments, and program evaluations. An examination of these four frameworks…

After a discussion of the confused terminology, overlapping categories, and ambiguity evident in categorization of comprehension questions in current reading series and in the literature on comprehension, a comprehensive classification scheme is proposed that seeks to avoid these problems. The proposed classification scheme has three orthogonal…

Five examples illustrate how teachers can analyze patterns of oral reading errors informally, effectively, and inexpensively. (RL)

A study examined how the "Reading Classroom Explorer" (RCE, a hypermedia learning environment) might enhance the learning of preservice teacher education students as they prepare to assume internships. RCE is a searchable database of digitized video clips from the Center for the Study of Reading's video series "Exemplary Ways To Teach Reading."…

This paper discusses reading instruction in the 20th century. The paper begins with a tour of the historical pathways that have led people, at the century's end, to the "rocky and highly contested terrain educators currently occupy in reading pedagogy." After the author/educator unfolds his version of a map of that terrain in the paper,…

A study asked how the use of the Reading Classroom Explorer (RCE)--a hypermedia learning environment that features video clips of successful teachers teaching reading to a diverse array of students--influences beginning teachers' thinking about reading issues. The context of the study was a reading education course which included use of RCE.…

Investigated school and classroom factors related to primary-grade reading achievement in schools with moderate to high numbers of students receiving subsidized lunch. Statistically significant factors included parent-school relationship, systematic assessment, small-group instruction, independent reading, student on-task behavior, strong home…

This work investigates the relationship between the programmatic and classroom instructional factors of schools and students' reading and writing achievement in 14 high-poverty schools. The study finds that schools which rated higher on a scale of collaborative leadership showed greater student growth in reading fluency and writing. Classroom…

In the bottom-up model of the reading process, the reader's first task is to decode the symbols into sound representations. By contrast, the top-down model assumes that the reader begins by guessing about the meaning of some unit of print. Each model suggests different instructional practices. (Author/SJL)

Research discoveries over the past 15 years concerning reading comprehension have had a significant impact on reading instruction, particularly schema theory. This theory, based on prior learning, which states that the reader uses the text to construct a meaning within his or her own mind, affects what teachers can do to help students improve…

A series of studies addressed basic questions about instruction in subject areas such as science and social studies at the elementary level, focusing on group discussion of textbook content and addressing the effects of instruction in terms of students' knowledge acquisition and their independent reading comprehension of new content. Subjects,…