A study examined the effects of "round robin reading" (RRR) as an instructional procedure in social studies. Specifically, the study asked whether an oral textbook presentation had a significant effect on learning social studies material and if grade level, reading level, social studies knowledge, and gender significantly affected the…

A study investigated the effects of nonverbal and verbal classification abilities on reading comprehension. Subjects, 104 fourth grade students, were tested on three measures of classification skill (a shifting of criteria task, a free sorting task, and a three-level hierarchical classification task) and on a measure of recall of relevant story…

To explore how readers create textual meanings or interpretations from written materials, a study that investigated reading from a semiotic perspective was conducted. The study's design was based on the principle of prior ethnography and employed data collection techniques common to field studies: participant/intervention and interviewing.…

To determine what effect the elimination of all literal questioning would have on students' literal comprehension abilities as well as inferential abilities, a five-month study was conducted with four groups of third and fourth grade students (n=33) who were reading on grade level in their school's adopted basal series. Two different third and…

The Helping Hands Project (HHP) is a program that aims at improving achievement in reading comprehension and in math problem-solving by helping the classroom teacher sustain instructional intensity. Implemented in grades four and six in two Newark School District elementary schools, HHP involved five teachers and 117 students. Ninety-two percent…

A study was conducted to determine the benefits of an approach to teaching inferential skills that combined an explicit attempt to sensitize children to why and how one should draw inferences to prior knowledge with substantial practice in drawing such inferences during story discussions. Subjects were 20 good and 20 poor fourth grade readers who…

Intended for parents of fifth grade children who are participating in Chapter 1 programs, the learning activities in this booklet give children practice with reading and writing. Among the language skills covered are (1) vocabulary in context; (2) phonetic analysis--consonant sounds and letters; (3) structural analysis--root word endings,…

Intended for parents of fourth grade children who are participating in Chapter 1 programs that support basic skills education, the learning activities in this booklet give children practice with reading and writing. Among the language skills covered in the activities are (1) vocabulary (in context, synonyms, antonyms, homophones, homographs,…

This study investigates the effects of meaningful-learning postquestions on recall of relevant and incidental information by two groups of fifth graders, good and poor comprehenders. The two groups had 48 fifth graders each, selected from 228 students who took the New Developmental Reading Test and the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test. Subjects…

Middle-school students, called "transescent learners," are at an age during which they undergo physical and intellectual changes that affect them emotionally and socially, causing confused thinking and insecure feelings. This paper offers seven guidelines to help the middle-school teacher select and present reading materials that enhance learning…

A study investigated the effectiveness of using thematic organizers to increase the reading comprehension of poor readers. The thematic organizer was used to expand the readers' prior knowledge by defining the implied thematic concept and presenting relevant examples of that concept. Twenty-four fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students who had been…

A study was undertaken to determine (1) the relationship between listening and reading (the receptive language mode) and (2) the relationship of listening and reading to speaking and writing (the generative mode), intellectual ability, self-concept, impulsivity/reflectivity, and socioeconomic status (SES). Sixty grade six students were…

A study examined the relationships between retelling--an indicator of reading comprehension obtained through a student's oral recall of a story--and three other indicators of reading comprehension representing various viewpoints in comprehension measurement: miscues, a post oral-reading cloze test, and a passage dependent multiple choice test.…

A study examined the concept of the universality or the cultural specificity of the ideal story structure using the J. M. Mandler and N. S. Johnson story grammar. Specifically, the study tested the effect of two different story structures, one a conventional fairy tale and the other a Cree Indian narrative, on the recall of Cree Indian children.…

A study was conducted (1) to examine the development of comprehension and production in written language of two aspects of linguistic knowledge, knowledge of ambiguity and paraphrase; and (2) to examine the influences of reading ability as measured by currently used standardized reading tests and of sex on the development of this knowledge of…