In this webinar, Janice A. Dole, Professor and Director of the Reading and Literacy Program in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Utah, discussed different strategies for delivering literacy instruction to meet a range of student needs, including the ways in which teachers can collaborate with reading specialists to…

Over the past few decades, reading assessment has been pushed to the forefront of the national discussion about education. The most recent reauthorizations of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1994, 2001) made assessment a priority as administrators and teachers are attempting to meet increasing accountability standards, but measuring…

This article presents the authors' response to Sharon Vaughn and colleagues' article "Response to Intervention for Middle School Students With Reading Difficulties: Effects of a Primary and Secondary Intervention." In Vaughn et al. article, a study in which they provided professional development to content area teachers, with the goal of…

Purpose: This commentary is a personal reaction to A. G. Kamhi's (2007) article on the "narrow view" of reading and his suggestion that this view be adopted as a way to address the reading problems of children and adolescents. Method: In this article, I consider the narrow view of reading from an adolescent literacy perspective and discuss the…

Four critical responses to an article, "The Role of Phonology and Phonologically Related Skills in Reading Instruction for Students Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing" (Wang, Trezek, Luckner, & Paul, 2008), are presented. Issue is taken with the conclusions of the article by Wang and colleagues regarding the "necessary" condition of phonological…

This article discusses (1) assessment of discourse through listening and reading to evaluate comprehension problems; (2) developmental aspects of the relationship between listening and reading comprehension skills; (3) problems with selecting text passages and methods of testing comprehension; and (4) the development of a set of passages and a…

Lack of gestalt imagery (the ability to create imaged wholes) can contribute to language comprehension disorder characterized by weak reading comprehension, weak oral language comprehension, weak oral language expression, weak written language expression, difficulty following directions, and a weak sense of humor. Sequential stimulation using an…

Issues in illiteracy are discussed, and the author comments on facets of the English language writing system. He advocates a formal approach in which comprehension, rather than decoding, is the focus for students, including slow learners or disabled readers. The approach would concentrate on patterns larger than the letter-sound unit. (CL)

Discusses the authors' research regarding the traditional prereading element designated by beginning reading programs as "setting a purpose for reading." (Author/DB)

Investigated young children's ability to use narrative contexts to infer the meanings of novel vocabulary terms. Two groups of 15 7-and 8-year-olds participated; children with normally developing reading comprehension skills and children with weak reading comprehension skill. Results are discussed. (Author/VWL)

Describes the organizational and linguistic skills that enable a reader, first, to interpret the statements in a text and their relationship to each other, and second, to judge the relative importance of these statements. Considers the interrelation between the two types of skills and how this applies to instructional strategies. (SED)

Comments on the nature of the reading enterprise for middle school students with reading-related learning disabilities as perceived by a cohort of sixth-grade students with reading disabilities. Reflects upon intervention programs in place for struggling middles school readers. Considers how to teach young adolescents with reading disabilities.…

Discusses a learning strategy, employing imaginal processes and verbal mediations procedures, designed to improve reading comprehension in 24 learning disabled students. Indicates significant gains and improvement in reading comprehension over a 15 week treatment period. (MM)

This paper presents numerous approaches that teachers may use to help pupils deal with difficulties in reading comprehension in mathematics. It discusses the importance of understanding the meaning of the words and symbols used. It argues that: (1) pupils need adequate background information prior to reading story or word problems; (2) a hands-on…

Describes the reading problems specific to these high school content areas: learning a foreign language; English; history; science; and mathematics. Asserts that while it cannot be assumed that all can become equally literate in all areas, teachers must provide students with as much content area background as possible. (KH)