This study examined the effects of reading mode (oral and silent) and text genre (narrative and expository) on fourth graders' reading comprehension. While controlling for prior reading ability of 48 participants, we measured comprehension. Using a repeated measured design, data were analyzed using analysis of covariance, paired t-tests, and…

A quasi-experimental design investigated the effectiveness of three reading intervention types in increasing reading comprehension, both explicit and implicit, using a sample of 78 students, approximately 17% of the population of third through fifth grades at a single-school, rural, K-12, Central Texas school district with an enrollment of…

Teachers can potentially address reading comprehension deficits in a content area, such as science, by using the students in their classrooms as resources. We examined the effects of a class-wide partner reading intervention with science reading materials on a measure of content comprehension skills. A total of 65 fourth-grade students and 61…

Problem: The problem of this study was to determine the difference in Bible comprehension scores among gender-based groups of older children using selected passages from three Bible translations: the Children's Bible, the Easy Bible, and the New Revised Korean Bible. Procedures: A total of 288 older children in three churches (Beautiful Baptist…

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of a program that offered sustained strategic reading instruction on reading abilities of third and fourth graders. The study was conducted among 1,469 children from 40 schools in the Netherlands. Schools were randomly assigned to either the experimental or control group. Multilevel…

To implement Response to Intervention with intermediate-grade struggling readers, there is a need for interventions that are responsive to individual student needs, and sufficiently comprehensive to support the many dimensions of the reading process. This research examined the efficacy of such an intervention, the Interactive Strategies…

This study examined whether post-reading comprehension would be affected by the inclusion of pictorial material with a story and a prereading prediction questionnaire. Subjects, 75 heterogeneously grouped fourth grade students randomly assigned to one of three groups, either (1) read a basal reader passage with pictorial material; or (2) read the…

A study investigated the development of vocabulary knowledge in elementary school children as a function of story reading for partially known and unknown words. Subjects, 43 fourth-grade low-middle to middle-class children from a rural elementary school in the southeastern United States, participated in a vocabulary checklist in which they…

An instructional study was conducted (1) to explore the efficacy of using an explicit instruction model versus a basal approach to teach the comprehension or critical reading skills of discerning fact and opinion and evaluating evidence, and (2) to learn whether adding a functional aspect to the instruction would affect the students' acquisition…

This first annual report describes student performance in reading and writing from the spring 1997 administration of the Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP). In this first administration of CSAP, all fourth grade students in Colorado were assessed. The report provides policymakers, educators, parents, and the community with a general…

A study examined three variables derived from earlier research on comprehension and recall of narrative text: time in short-term memory; causal connections allowed; and referential connections allowed. Subjects, 84 randomly selected fourth graders in three suburban public elementary schools, read 8 short texts that each contained 4 embedded goals,…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of strategically teaching metacognitive skills to high-, medium-, and low-achieving fourth grade students, and how it influenced their ability to comprehend grade level texts. Nine children participated in the experimental group, and nine were selected for the control group. A pre/post miscue…

Examines the effect of self-instruction training on comprehension monitoring of below-average and above-average readers. Finds that self-instruction aided both groups of students in recognizing between-sentence contradictions and that below-average readers performed as well as above-average readers on transfer measures. (RS)

Examines the effect of variations in syntactic structure (noun and participle, or verb phrase of a subject-verb-object clause) on oral reading of fourth graders and college students. Finds that children experienced many disruptions while reading the less common noun and participle structure, and that adults experienced few disruptions. (RS)

Finds that sentence combining practice may have enhanced cohesion knowledge and had a positive effect on general reading comprehension. (SR)