The present study builds upon established best practices in narrative comprehension instruction by redesigning a story map, to retain the benefits of text structure instruction, while also facilitating students to reach deeper levels of character-based comprehension. Framed in reader response theory, dual coding theory, and developmental theories…

Current standards push for elementary students to have text-based and text-centric discussions of what they read. This study explored what bilingual third-grade students talked about during small-group text-based discussions of informational texts. The author conducted a qualitative analysis of 10 video-recorded discussions, five of books matched…

The author explored text difficulty for third-grade bilingual students reading below grade level. In six small-group discussions, students read and discussed informational texts matched to their reading levels, and in six other sessions they read and discussed texts one year ahead of their reading levels. The alternating treatment design and…

The merits of decentralized small groups has been questioned in literature and by practicing teachers; thus this study shows the academic and identity work children do as they attempt to make meaning in these spaces. This study explores the affordances and drawbacks of decentralized small group discussion contexts in a multiage (3rd/4th) grade…

The purpose of this article is to describe the assessment-driven instruction that facilitated third graders' increased understanding of informational texts, as revealed in their written responses to texts during one school year. The key instructional practices included making transparent for students what it means to synthesize, engaging students…

Examines the nature of third graders' responses to the literature that is read aloud to them. Documents both individual and class development in response patterns over time. Finds responding to literature fostered comprehension, discussion, and writing skills, and promoted emotional involvement with and appreciation of literature. (MG)

This instructional study investigated the effects of two approaches to fostering elementary students' comprehension of literature. Participants were 54 third-grade students in 2 classrooms in a linguistic and culturally diverse, urban elementary school. Students read two folktales, receiving a Scaffolded Reading Experience (SRE) unit with one…

A study examined children's theme comprehension of non-religious moral children's stories. The study used 3 tasks of ascending difficulty: (1) selecting the moral theme when it is found in a multiple-choice context; (2) identifying the story-with-the-same-message when the message is found in a new context; and (3) moral message construction (a…

A study investigated the use of riddles beginning with How, When, and Why to see which question type was easier for low-achieving students to answer correctly, and to see if practice could increase the number of correct answers chosen. For comparison purposes, scores were also collected for an average-achieving group without practice, to see if…

In response to the tradition of examining a new test's validity by comparing it with a well-established multiple-choice test, a study investigated whether multiple-choice tests with one right answer can measure the reading comprehension process as defined by constructivists. The study compared the information obtained from two different…