Children ages 2-18 spend between two and four hours per day watching TV, a calculation that is even higher if DVDs, videos and the Internet are included. Although the amount of television watched by today's children has raised concerns about their literacy development, captions could hold a key to turning television into an educational asset.…

In this review of literature we examine empirical research of individual differences in younger readers' knowledge and use of expository text structures. The goal of this review is to explore the influence of reader and text characteristics in order to better understand the instructional needs of elementary school readers. First we review research…

This action-research case study endeavors to enhance the summarization skills of first grade students who are reading at or above the third grade level during the first trimester of the academic school year. Students read "twin text" sources, meaning, fiction and nonfiction literary selections focusing on a common theme to help identify…

Basal reading series are used in a majority of classrooms in the United States. The purpose of this study was to examine the frequency of fiction and nonfiction genres included in four recently published first and second grade basal reading series and to compare the frequencies to studies of older basal reading series. Based on the work of…

Previous studies have demonstrated the efficacy of the Text Structure Strategy for improving text recall. The strategy emphasizes the identification of text structure for encoding and recalling information. Traditionally, the efficacy of this strategy has been measured through free recall. The present study examined whether recall and eye-movement…

This paper analyzes the influence of three different learning paradigms for learning literacy--formalist, cognitive-processing, and literacy practices--on the implementation of the Common Core State Standards. It argues that the Common Core State Standards are based largely on a formalist paradigm as evident in the emphasis on teaching text…

Strong reading comprehension skills are central not only to academic and professional success, but also to a productive social and civic life. These skills build the capacity to learn independently, to absorb information on a variety of topics, to enjoy reading, and to experience literature more deeply. Despite the growing demand for highly…

This article follows the development of three literacy programs that were designed by researchers at Michigan State University to support struggling readers and writers. The literacy interventions focus on strategy instruction in both writing and reading, and they culminate in the development of an integrated reading-writing program to support the…

This study investigated the effects of different versions of Web-based instruction focused on text structure on fifth- and seventh-grade students' reading comprehension. Stratified random assignment was employed in a two-factor experiment embedded within a pretest and multiple posttests design (immediate and four-month delayed posttests). The two…

A study of 25 expert teachers and their shared reading lessons in grades 3-8 suggests that teachers focus their modeling during shared reading in four categories: comprehension, vocabulary, text structures, and text features. (Contains 1 figure.)

As an instructional tool, graphic organizers (GOs) have been highly recommended and used in contemporary classrooms. Over the past decade, a number of concerns have been raised about claims for the effectiveness of GOs. These concerns involve the inconsistent research results on student improvements, the limitation in generalizability from…

Research shows that students who have a good understanding of narrative text structure have fewer problems comprehending stories. Research also suggests that many students require explicit instruction in how to comprehend this text type. While some children are able to figure out the more elaborate structure of narrative text on their own (i.e.,…

Considering the difficulties in understanding the global meaning of texts, this paper intends to give some suggestions on how to help students reach a deeper understanding of texts in intensive reading classroom within the framework of schema theory. The purpose of this paper is expressed in three ways. The first is to give a brief overview of…

Traces the career of Jack Stenner. Stenner made the empirical discovery that observable readability could be entirely predicted from word familiarity and sentence length, and applied this "Lexile Framework"(R) to books and readers. Discusses the use of the Lexile Framework as a way to target specific readers. (SLD)

It is a challenge for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to integrate language, social understanding, and emotional intent of messages to understand their social world. They often have deficits in language and social cognition and difficulty interpreting and labeling emotions and incorporating or integrating each of these aspects of…