Reading teachers and researchers who really want to find out for themselves how difficult it is for students to learn to read and write should teach themselves how to read and write upside down. Being able to read and write upside down will also help teachers working one-on-one with students, since it allows them to sit across the table from the…

Over a semester, two university-based researchers worked with 12 teachers in a single school (grades 1-5) to better understand the teachers' implementation of a transactional strategies instruction curriculum. The researchers and teachers used group discussions, classroom observations, and one-to-one conversations to jointly develop structured…

Noting that there are many strategies a teacher can use to increase motivation and confidence of students who avoid reading, this paper discusses the strategy of using repeated readings through audio support. After an overview, the paper discusses setting up the program. Three scenarios are presented: a student who does not like to read, a student…

A special summer program was developed to increase five elementary students' abilities to locate the main idea in written text. The researcher worked with the students 3 hours each morning for 8 weeks, devoting approximately 2 hours of that time to reading comprehension by teaching correct strategies for identifying the main idea. Question and…

This discussion guide features plans for three workshops, each accompanying one of the 20-minute video programs in the series "Breaking the Cycle of Failure: Marie Carbo's Practical Strategies for Reading Success." The three programs present an overview of the need for teaching based on children's reading styles, the effect of using the…

A study was conducted to answer the question, "What are the basic words in a list of words kindergarten through sixth grade students will frequently encounter in their reading?" The study was limited to the words the students would encounter in their textbooks (including basals). A corpus of 7,230 words was then analyzed by two raters to…

This conceptual paper uses two literatures--the work examining the development of expertise in reading comprehension processes and the work on effective approaches to instruction--to build an instructional model for teaching reading comprehension strategies. The report assumes a constructivist view of both reading comprehension and social…

This annotated bibliography lists research on current practices and selected new practices in the teaching of reading comprehension. The introduction states the problem, the purpose of the study, its organization and limitations, and includes a glossary of terms. The 29 annotations are in two broad categories: research dealing with classroom…

The purpose of this paper is to present a direct instructional strategy, which is based upon what is known about effective classroom instruction. After defining direct instruction in reading, research that discriminates effective teachers from less effective teachers is presented. The paper then discusses the five-step, teacher directiveness…

Hyperactive boys (N=20) recalled fewer words and showed less category organization than reading-disabled and normal boys. Rather than lacking the skill to use semantic organization as a strategy in free recall, hyperactive boys had difficulty in spontaneously generating the strategy and in sustaining sufficient effort to task completion.…

Attempts to justify the place of real books in the beginning reading curriculum, and to suggest teaching strategies for the development of a multi-cue approach to reading. (RS)

Describes two approaches--direct explanation and reciprocal teaching--for helping poor readers understand how the reading process works and how to study and learn from a text. Explains how to plan a lesson, and offers two samples. (MM)

Presents a study in which children with low reading comprehension were taught four study activities: summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting. Instruction was by reciprocal teaching whereby an adult tutor and children alternately discussed the text. States that students' accuracy on comprehension tests increased significantly and was…

Recommends five process-oriented strategies for teaching vocabulary: (1) teach words in context; (2) move from known to unknown; (3) group and categorize items; (4) relate content to students' interests; and (5) provide for constant review. (ARH)

Describes the process of mental modeling, a technique for helping poor readers become strategic readers by increasing their metacognitive control. (ARH)