A practicum was designed to improve the reading growth and achievement of 60 eighth-grade students who were one or more years behind grade level by utilizing CNN Newsroom and the "USA Today" newspaper as an integral part of the reading program. Pre- and posttests were administered to measure outcomes. The six areas measured were: (1)…

Readers need to be encouraged to combine prior knowledge with information gained from the text and then try to predict what will happen later in the text. The overhead projector is a valuable tool for enhancing instruction involving prediction. The process of gradually revealing text to a group of students, eliciting their predictions, evaluating…

Numerous comprehension strategies can be used successfully with both children's literature and a basal reading series to help children focus on written text during reading. One of the most important techniques is developing background knowledge prior to reading--the overall purpose of which is to help readers relate their existing schemata to the…

This paper addresses cognitive issues raised by the success of an early reading intervention program, Reading Recovery (originated in New Zealand and also used in Australia and the United States,) in which the great majority of students move from low reading achievement to average achievement for their age group within 12-15 weeks. The first…

Good readers tend to engage in conscious reading strategies that poor readers do not. Expert readers display the following strategic behaviors that novices do not: (1) studying text segments previously found difficult more extensively than easy segments; (2) spending more study time on difficult stories than on easy ones; (3) summarizing just the…

A pilot study was conducted to contrast children's comprehension of inside view (where writers share the inner thoughts of characters with readers) and character plans in an original story and its basal reader adaptation prior to and following participation in a reading conference focused upon these aspects of character. Subjects were 12 students…

Noting that good reading comprehension is aided by the reader's attention to text organization, this paper presents a rationale and method for teaching students to map content materials. The paper begins by noting research demonstrating that good comprehenders attend to text organization. It then briefly reviews research related to the impact on…

Emergent reading levels are those levels a pupil can sustain under direct guidance or with mediation and support by the teacher. A major implication of the emergent reading level construct is that strategies for reading placement would need to be revised. A study was conducted to ascertain whether the emergent reading level concept is valid and…

A variety of techniques for improving readers' analysis-by-synthesis abilities (rapid, efficient reading typical of highly skilled readers) are presented in this paper. The techniques discussed in the first part emphasize improving reading comprehension and include the following: (1) modifications of the cloze procedure (encouraging readers to use…

Offers a plan for organizing and implementing a schoolwide reading week entitled, "Drop Everything Else, Read" (DEER). Presents explanations and directions for eight reading activities which focus on animals. Includes materials that can be duplicated and used by students as bookmarks and certificates. (ML)

Reports on a study in which a seven-year-old girl was trained to focus on individual words in learning to read. (FL)

This booklet is part of a series of seven booklets designed to introduce aspects of effective reading instruction that should be considered when teaching reading to students with disabilities. It focuses on essential skill building and teaching activities related to developing fluent reading. The methods described of teaching reading to students…

This action research project focused on causes for reading deficiencies of the targeted eighth grade students and how those deficiencies affect students' achievement in language arts, science, and mathematics. The targeted population consisted of 30 eighth grade students in a middle-class community located in a suburban area of a large Midwestern…

This study examined the effects of training community college students in two reading strategies, self-questioning and summarization, on their comprehension and retention of expository material. Eight developmental reading students from a community college in central New Jersey were taught the strategies of summarization and self-questioning and…

This book offers suggestions to help parents make their children successful readers and learners. The first chapter, Getting Started, discusses setting an example, being a tutor, creating a positive environment, and letting children be the stars. The second chapter, The Reading Process: Building Meaning, discusses setting a purpose, stages of the…