This report describes a program for improving student vocabulary skills. The targeted population was fifth and sixth grade students in two growing middle class communities located north of a large midwestern city. The problem of low vocabulary skills was documented through observation of student reading and writings, teacher surveys, classroom…

This report describes a program for integrating visual art into the core curriculum of sixth grade students, in a growing, upper middle and middle class, suburban community, elementary school located in a northwest suburb of Chicago (Illinois). The problem was noted originally by the teachers, who found the students unable to apply skills learned…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not periodicals would be useful in motivating low performing sixth grade readers. Two groups of remedial reading students from a New Jersey suburb were studied over a four month period. The control group was taught reading skills using conventional materials such as novels and short stories.…

This project paper described a program for increasing reading comprehension. The targeted population consisted of sixth grade students at River Bend Elementary School in a middle class community located in western Illinois. The problem of a steady decline in reading comprehension was documented by the Illinois Goals Assessment Program, Iowa Tests…

The Group Embedded Figures Test and the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills were administered to 222 sixth grade students to explore the relationship between field-dependent/field-independent cognitive styles and reading achievement; scores from the Lorge-Thorndike Intelligence Tests were used to control IQ. The 60 students with the highest scores and the…

This thesis explores some difficulties associated with the use of the cloze procedure, particularly in relation to the interpretation of an individual's score on a cloze test. Cloze tests were administered to 112 grade-six children in four schools. The results indicated that for the children in this study the easiest words to replace were those…

This study surveyed the teaching practices of instructors of grade six language arts in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Teacher characteristics of (sex, number of university courses in language arts, length of teaching experience, and number of language arts inservice courses) were correlated with the frequency of use of selected teaching practices. One…

Comprehension levels necessary to the acquisition and retention of facts, concepts, and rules and the facilitating effects of the use of orienting directions and postadjunct questions were investigated in a study involving 105 sixth-grade students. Four treatment groups each received a version of a six-page fictional passage, differing in the use…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a supplementary reading program utilizing paraprofessionals and increased instructional time on the reading scores of grade six students with identified deficiencies in basic reading skills. To achieve this purpose, the test scores of three experimental groups were compared with the…

The purpose of this study was to obtain a measure of the reliability of the informal reading inventory (IRI) when administered to selected sixth grade students. Houghton Mifflin's Pupil Placement Tests were administered to 36 sixth grade girls. The raw scores of the students on the pupil Placement Tests were divided into two equivalent halves, and…

Sixteen sixth-grade students participated in a study of the reasoning strategies employed by good and poor readers. Students, trained in applying introspective procedures, completed instruments that measured verbal reasoning, determining cause and effect, reading for inference, and determining main idea. Protocols obtained during five consecutive…

This action research project describes a program to increase the basic writing ability and improve the attitude of sixth grade students. The targeted classroom was located in a unit district 45 miles northwest of a large metropolitan area. The district's population consists of a large amount of minority students and low-income families. Evidence…

A total of 272 children participated in a study of the effectiveness of three support systems for cuing sixth grade students in interpreting the metaphoric language of poetry. The first system involved regular classroom teachers who applied their own verbal cuing, the second included external instructional support through media and the teachers'…

This study was conducted to determine the relationship between listening comprehension and rate of presentation using meaningful prose materials. A total of 103 students from a suburban sixth-grade class in a central New Jersey school district participated in the study. To determine reading comprehension levels, the students were administered the…

This doctoral dissertation examines students' perceptions of their teachers' feelings toward them and possible relationships that exist between perceptions and reading achievement. In addition, the study sought to determine if differences in positive feelings exist among Caucasian, Negro, and Indian students; between Title I and non-Title I…