Explores the validity of skill hierarchies in reading comprehension. Finds no differences in comprehension skills between subjects receiving or not receiving comprehension skills instruction. Argues for a unitary or holistic view of reading comprehension. Argues for increasing the time students spend reading self-selected materials. Suggests…

Examines fourth- and sixth-grade children's strategies (using think-aloud protocols or silent reading) for processing informational text. Finds that silent readers engaged in more physical backtracking to previously-read sentences, while think-aloud protocol processing tended to focus on the local, sentence level. Illustrates complex relations…

Evaluates four commercial reading programs at the second, fourth, and sixth grade levels with respect to main idea instructional practices and readability of text. Evaluates the type of main idea tasks and main idea statements, as well as placement of explicit main idea statements in the text. Discusses implications for practitioners meeting…

The research and analysis completed for this study focuses on one variable and its relationship to student achievement: school wide student attendance. It is a variable that is often overlooked or taken for granted as an interesting but meaningless statistic, however, the positive impact of good school attendance on academic achievement may be…

The tables presented in this document show the Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS) results for the past two years. Twenty-four tables show results as percent at each performance level and percent passing, as well as percent of students tested. The tables shown in this document include: (1) Mathematics Grade 3; (2) Reading Grade 3; (3)…

Within an evidentiary framework for operationally defining academic English language proficiency (AELP), linguistic analyses of standards, classroom discourse, and textbooks have led to specifications for assessment of AELP. The test development process described here is novel due to the emphasis on using linguistic profiles to inform the …

The main goal of this report is to present evidence on the predictive validity of an English language arts (ELA) performance assessment (PA) administered in Grades 2-9 in a large urban school district. To account for the hierarchical structure of the data (students are nested within schools), we employed hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to…

Of the 1,828 grade 6 students who received accelerated instruction outside of the regular classroom, 27% participated in both reading and math interventions. Of the 1,872 grade 7 students who participated in accelerated instruction outside of the classroom, 26% participated in both reading and math interventions. The overall state test results for…

It is widely assumed that increasing the number of teaching assistants (TAs) in the classroom will be beneficial to children, and this is one important aim of the recently implemented Workforce Agreement. But there are still significant gaps in knowledge about many aspects of their deployment and impact. The Class Size and Pupil-Adult Ratios…

This booklet on nutrition for grades 4-6 contains classroom activities as well as recipes for easily prepared nutritious dishes, e.g., applesauce, cookies, bread. Information is provided on the nutritional values of items in the basic food groups, and activity sheets are included. (JD)

A study examined how regular listening to oral reading by teachers affected fourth and sixth grade students' reading comprehension, attitudes towards reading, and time spent doing independent reading. Subjects, 221 students from six diverse school systems in Connecticut, were read to for 20 minutes, three times per week, for 12 weeks. Pre- and…

Three paper-and-pencil measures were administered to students in fourth (40 students), sixth (30 students), and eighth (30 students) grades to assess different aspects of their knowledge of English derivational suffixes. Results indicated that children appear to develop a rudimentary knowledge of derivational morphology--the ability to recognize a…

A study examined the ability of third, fourth, and sixth grade students to use spellings to arrive at the pronunciations of unknown words. A test of 29 pseudo words was developed. Pseudo words were chosen because they eliminate familiarity with a word in its spoken form and contextual cues as sources of help in decoding. At the start of the test,…

A study was conducted to investigate the peer concepts held by 16 second-grade, 17 fourth-grade, and 17 sixth-grade students. A paired comparisons sociometric procedure was used to obtain children's descriptions of their classmates in the areas of reading, mathematics, drawing, and an athletic skill (running). In addition, the procedure measured…

This report evaluated a cooperative teaching program designed to provide supplementary diagnostic and prescriptive reading instructional services to New York City elementary school students who were more than one grade level behind in reading. Three hundred students in grades three through six received reading instruction in reading laboratories.…