A successful content area reading program not only includes reading classes that teach specific skills, but also provides for the inservice training of teachers, offering activities that facilitate student reading comprehension in the content areas. For such a program to succeed, the financial commitment and time devoted to teacher training must…

Courses in remedial and corrective reading in Gary, Indiana, middle schools are examined in this paper. The basic reading skills test, which examines 20 areas of reading skill, is administered initially to all entering seventh grade students. Students who score below 50% on the test or have instructional reading levels below 4.0 are placed in…

This guide is designed to aid schools in establishing a school-wide or system-wide content-area reading program. Guidelines are offered for understanding the learner, and suggestions are given for assessing the needs, abilities, interests, and goals of students. Formulating instructional objectives and procedures includes planning approaches both…

Approximately 300 elementary and secondary school teachers from across the United States responded to a survey concerning their attitudes toward the role and the performance of reading specialists in their schools. The teachers completed a 30-item Likert-like attitude scale and provided demographic data. The results indicated that teachers in…

A study was conducted to determine the perceived quality of undergraduate and graduate programs in reading by former students in those programs. Survey forms were mailed to 851 persons whose names were provided as graduates of ninety colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. Forms were returned from 404 persons holding the…

The goals of an intervention study of formal reading instruction were to encourage teachers to incorporate more direct teaching of comprehension, to maintain a more equitable balance between time devoted to word recognition instruction and time devoted to comprehension instruction, to promote independent level reading, and to minimize the amount…

As part of the work from the Content Area Reading Project (CARP), which focuses on inservice teacher education in content area reading, a study examined the effects of an inservice content area reading program that involved two three-hour workshops per month on the theory and practical application of teaching methods for content area reading…

A survey was conducted of 42 secondary schools in the North-Eastern Education Board area of Northern Ireland concerning remedial reading practices and procedures adopted by remedial reading teachers. The survey consisted of 50 questions divided into seven parts: general background information on the schools; number of pupils receiving remedial…

Using data from two cohorts of public school educators, this paper examines the interdistrict migration within Connecticut of public school classroom teachers, support staff (librarian/media specialists, counselors, school psychologists, social workers, and reading specialists), and administrators. The purpose is to identify characteristics of…

The role of special reading teachers is currently in flux, as local education agencies expect them to work increasingly with other teachers and parents and consequently provide less direct instruction for students. Historically, reading specialists taught disabled readers since it was hypothesized that their special training in reading diagnosis…

Inservice training for teachers must provide opportunities for sharing among participants, involve teachers in planning and implementation, provide practical experiences, involve parents, be offered at a convenient time to allow full involvement, and offer experiences which teachers can use. One project for staff development began when a group of…

A study was conducted to determine the impact on remedial reading instruction of recent Massachusetts legislation aimed at providing diagnostic/prescriptive services to identified special needs children in the public schools. Specifically, the study concerned available programs, certification and deployment of specialized personnel, delivery of…

Studies show that while most clinicians agree on seven critical reading activities--instant word recognition, word meanings, oral reading, silent reading comprehension, listening comprehension, and attention/motivation--they reveal little agreement on the diagnoses and suggestions for remediation of reading problems. The computer assisted…

Even when reading improvement courses are provided for community college students with low reading ability, the students may be unable to apply to their content courses the skills learned in the reading courses. This paper suggests that reading teachers should work with individual content-course instructors to show them how to help their students…

Guidelines for establishing content area reading programs at the junior high school level are presented in this paper. Following an overview of the development of a content area reading program in Columbia, Missouri, in which inservice teacher education was provided, 31 guidelines are presented to aid a content area reading resource specialist in…