Explores what purposes literature circles serve for students and why they are positive components of literacy instruction. Discusses why literature circles are important, group size, texts to use, how students prepare for literature circles, and how to make adjustments for struggling readers. Includes a 13-item list of resources. (SR)

Describes how English teachers of grades 6-12 in one high school have given more direct instruction in the explicit strategies students should use when reading. These strategies, combined with frequent opportunities for students to reflect on their effectiveness on integrating these strategies into their reading processes, resulted in more…

The purpose of this study was to compare the relative effectiveness of live (SERT) and computer-based (iSTART) reading strategy training. Prior to and after training, participants read scientific texts and self-explained after each sentence. They also answered comprehension questions. Students showed improvement in the quality of their…

Using easy-to-understand models from everyday practice and supporting the classroom observations with research, this book describes how a teacher replaced traditional phonics instruction with strategies incorporating "onset" and "rime" that improved students' reading comprehension. The book notes that as students' level of comfort with phonics…

A special summer program was developed to increase five elementary students' abilities to locate the main idea in written text. The researcher worked with the students 3 hours each morning for 8 weeks, devoting approximately 2 hours of that time to reading comprehension by teaching correct strategies for identifying the main idea. Question and…

This discussion guide features plans for three workshops, each accompanying one of the 20-minute video programs in the series "Breaking the Cycle of Failure: Marie Carbo's Practical Strategies for Reading Success." The three programs present an overview of the need for teaching based on children's reading styles, the effect of using the…

One reason that university students fail to achieve optimally in course work is their lack of reading skills. The higher education student needs to achieve skills appropriate to the involved task in reading. Through diagnosis, it is possible to ascertain weak links in the reading achievement of students. For students to achieve optimally from…

A study compared the relative effectiveness of a direct instruction method for finding the main idea in a text with a method that combined direct instruction with a checklist that encouraged the students to monitor their application of the main idea strategy. Subjects, 56 fifth-graders at a suburban elementary school, were divided into one of…

This book provides a review of the theoretical, empirical, and instructional issues in the field of college reading and study strategies through a careful and systematic examination of the relevant literature. The articles and their authors are, as follows: (1) "Vocabulary Acquisition and the College Student" (Michele L. Simpson and…

Addressing the question of how schools and teachers can foster an advanced level of reading awareness among secondary students, this paper focuses on the similarity in language used to describe recent research on both the composing process and comprehension as acts of constructing meaning. It presents a perspective on the reading/writing…

Investigates the effects of prior provision of context on the reading behavior of an above-average reader. Results indicate that discussion of context, through examining relevant illustrations, answering questions, and introducing new words, significantly decreased errors and slightly increased the amount of self-correction. (Author/GEA)

Concludes that poor readers benefit from a cooperative strategy that gives them practice toward fluency in a supportive situation. Explains how repeated reading works and offers a strategy for using it. (FL)

Argues that the directed reading activity (DRA) is a teaching strategy of limited use to students and discusses how teachers can transform the teaching strategy into a learning strategy. Discusses the generalization of the DRA strategy, emphasizes self-checking for learner control of strategies, and describes attributional consequences of teaching…

Describes a behavior modification program aimed at encouraging students to increase the frequency of leisure reading done at home. (EL)

Describes two aspects of reading theory: a reader's background knowledge and the organization of text events and ideas. Illustrates how these aspects were applied to instructional design and discusses the results of this application. Includes recommendations on how to apply background knowledge and to create more comprehensible texts. (RDN)