Although early reading instruction focuses on phonemic awareness and the alphabetic principle, research indicates that reading comprehension strategies can be effectively taught to young students. Peer-reviewed studies that employed experimental or quasi-experimental designs and included children between the ages of five and nine, some of whom had…

Assessment is essential for designing individualized educational plans (IEPs) for children. In order to contribute effectively to this process, assessments must be appropriate for the group, show neither floor nor ceiling effects, and help teachers formulate specific aims. Different attempts to develop such assessments for the writing of deaf…

Examines the responses of second-grade students asked to listen to pseudonarration for information or to listen to the text as a story. Finds that, regardless of purpose given, the students focused on the story idea units more than the informational idea units. Discusses implications of these findings for research and practice. (RS)

Determines the potential benefits of using literature webbing in books with predictable narratives. Finds webbing to be an effective means for improving comprehension, reading ability, and story structure knowledge. (RS)

Reading is the foundation for literacy and comprehension is the foundation for education. Many learning disabled students struggle to understand what they have read and many instructional approaches in small group settings focus on decoding rather than on comprehension. Employing a dual strategic approach to facilitate comprehension enables…

Takes readers to a second grade classroom to see how children's meanings of a story grow as they engage in a variety of related activities. Discusses how the meaning of a story grows to become multifaceted as children use the story for different personal and social purposes in the classroom. (MG)

Literacy consultant Joan Groeber provides educators with a teacher-friendly, step-by-step guide for creating and using rubrics to assess a wide range of literacy skills. Groeber's approach helps ensure that students gain a clear understanding of teacher expectations and assume a greater responsibility for their own learning. Offering an overview…

A study was conducted to identify poor readers and to characterize weaknesses in their knowledge and use of story structure in comprehension and recall. Subjects were 80 year-3 children in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 20 good readers and 60 poor readers. The poor readers were then divided into relatively homogeneous subgroups, using measures…

A study examined whether text structures were included in the "oral" videotaped retellings of a second grader with deafness across 28 texts. Improvements in the child's ability to include specific elements of text structures were documented over nine months. A 12-month increase in reading ability and narrative ability was also documented.…

Investigates the effectiveness of instruction in story mapping as a means to promote first-grade students' comprehension of central story elements in children's literature. Concludes that instruction in story mapping is an effective instructional strategy for promoting first-grade students' ability to identify central narrative elements in…

Discusses how beginning readers respond to familiar and unfamiliar stories. States that children begin as inventive readers, using different strategies--such as naming, counting, or structuring--to "read" the text. (MM)

Discusses the use of story frames as a strategy for teaching reading comprehension to first grade students, and includes examples of student responses. (JC)

An example of reader, writer, and text transaction and interaction may be seen in a study that examined story grammar and applied propositional analysis, cohesive analysis, and miscue analysis to one reader and one text to determine comprehension. A third grade boy read and then retold the story "The Accident." The miscues were marked,…

Based on the hypothesis that teachers' naturally occurring presentations of storyreading have an effect on children's literacy learning, a study examined whether teachers can be trained to provide a structure for listening to stories and whether this type of presentation would result in significant gains in children's story understanding. Five…