Historians often present their interpretation of the past in written accounts. In order to gain deeper knowledge of the discipline of history, students must learn how to read and write historical accounts. In this experimental pretest--posttest study, we investigated the impact of a domain-specific reading instruction followed by domain-specific…

The authors examine the results for students with disabilities from a 2-year randomized controlled trial with students identified in ninth grade and followed through 10th grade in their allotted condition group. Prior to ninth grade, students with disabilities who met criteria for low reading comprehension (i.e., through failure on the state…

A 2-year, randomized control trial with 9th to 10th grade students with significant reading problems was provided for 50 minutes a day in small groups. Comparison students were provided an elective class and treatment students the reading intervention. Students were identified as demonstrating reading difficulties through failure on their state…

Sixty-five Norwegian 10th graders used the software Read&Answer 2.0 (Vidal-Abarca et al., 2011) to read five different texts presenting conflicting views on the controversial scientific issue of sun exposure and health. Participants were administered a multiple-choice topic-knowledge measure before and after reading, a word recognition task,…

In this experimental study we examined the effects of integrating teacher-directed knowledge-building and student-regulated comprehension practices in 7th- to 10th-grade English language arts classes. We also investigated the effect of instructional quality and whether integrating practices differentially benefitted students with lower entry-level…

One path to improving adolescents' literacy skills is to integrate reading and writing into the content areas in which such work occurs. Although argumentative writing has been found to help students understand historical content and transform information, scholars do not know the influence of specific task structures on students' writing or…

This study examined the effects of three types of reading interventions on the science text reading of secondary students with learning disabilities (LD). Twenty 10th-grade students with LD participated in the study. Using a within-subjects design, the relative effects of three different instructional approaches--text reading, vocabulary learning,…

This study explored the relationship between reading and achievement on a science standardized test. A nonfiction reading subtest and the science section of the Connecticut Academic Performance Test were compared for Grade 10 students at 3 Connecticut high schools. Results showed a moderate-to-strong positive relationship between the variables.…

Examines degree to which three types of tasks affect the selection of main points in instructional texts. Finds, on average, type of task did affect the number and kind of selected text fragments, but the variation between the students was large. Suggests findings provide more insight into three ways of identifying main points. (RS)

Explores the effect of graphic organizer instruction versus outlining on students' recall of text. Finds that students who used graphic organizers and who received training in summarization and question generation scored significantly higher than groups instructed in outlining or graphic organizers alone. (RS)

This study examined the efficacy of Judith Langer's PreReading Plan (PReP) with Hispanic and other high school students. Specifically, the study investigated (1) the effect the PReP has on learning when used with predominantly Anglo and Hispanic high school students in conjunction with a social studies textbook reading assignment; (2) whether…

With the use of verbal report strategies, a study was conducted to examine (1) the types of comprehension strategies readers use to process familiar and less familiar texts and (2) the differential use of think aloud strategies by average and below average readers. Subjects were 15 tenth grade male students in upstate New York. Two weeks prior to…

The cognitive processing capacity (CPC) model of teaching and studying was used to determine whether tenth grade students could improve their performance in biology. The 27 students in the experimental class were taught to study information in quantities that matched their CPC and to chunk these quantities together under a heading in a study…

A study investigated how students' mental representation of an expository text and the inferences they used in summarizing varied as a function of text difficulty and of differences in the task. Subjects, 96 college students and students from grades 6 and 10, wrote summaries of expository texts and answered orally several probe questions about the…

Asserts that, although international understanding is essential for survival, most high school students do not acquire the necessary skills and knowledge for competing in the global community. Finds that geographic knowledge can be integrated into literature courses and includes exemplary lesson plans. (CFR)