The author concludes that the demonstration of the effectiveness of a child-monitored token reading program in a normal classroom setting clearly indicates the feasibility of utilizing behavior modification principles for a wide range of educational endeavors. (Author)

Describes a study that examined the classroom behavior and reading achievement of elementary school children placed on the Feingold food additive elimination diet. Concludes that children who remained on the diet for six months became less impulsive but did not raise their reading scores significantly. (FL)

Describes a 12-week peer tutoring reading program for primary students. Students showed significant reading gains when compared with a control group, but lost these gains when they returned to individual silent reading. Concludes that peer tutoring is an under-utilized but valuable teaching strategy. (Author/LS)

Describes a Reading Recovery case study involving a first-grade student who was at risk for learning how to read and write. Notes that this student learned to read strategically and was accelerated to the average band in her classroom after 81 Reading Recovery lessons, without first knowing the alphabet. (SR)

Describes a classroom-based research project that investigated how talking and writing about the novel "Sarah, Plain and Tall" (by Patricia MacLachlan) and rereading parts as a group helped four deaf teenagers build meaning and broaden their understanding of the story. (SR)

Tests the effectiveness of an instructional graphic (frames) on fourth and fifth grade students' ability to learn from reading their social studies textbooks. Finds that, for fifth grade students, framing was a more effective instructional technique than was the instruction suggested in the teacher's edition of the regular classroom social studies…

Compares teaching emphasizing story meaning (major plot elements) with teaching emphasizing surface features of language (word analysis and accurate reading). Finds an emphasis on story meaning led to superior performance on an array of outcome measures. Finds differences especially notable for children in low and average reading groups. (SR)

Focuses on the relationship between the development of segmental awareness and dyslexia. Finds that students in two training programs that taught the skills required to use phonemes performed as well as normal readers on phoneme segmentation tasks. Notes that the improvements were correlated in dictation but not in reading. (RS)

Investigates the effects of teaching text-specific vocabulary on eighth graders' comprehension of expository text and their ability to make causal connections. Finds that vocabulary instruction prior to reading improves comprehension, regardless of the student's reading ability and that text-specific vocabulary instruction improves subjects'…

Describes the home and school literacy experiences of a group of children with severe motor and speech disabilities in order to examine the relationship between these experiences and reading and spelling abilities in this population. Finds that home literacy experiences in the groups studied at best had a marginal influence on reading development.…

Investigates effects of paired reading on reading fluency and reading accuracy of four English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students with limited English proficiency. Shows that the students benefited from the paired reading intervention and demonstrated steady improvement in reading fluency and accuracy. Indicates that paired reading can serve as a…

Offers an analysis of 10 "Sesame Street" episodes, revealing that the literacy messages conveyed on the program do not reflect current understanding of the process of becoming literate. Shows that hardly anybody reads on "Sesame Street." Discusses why Ernie can't read and how to help him read. (SR)

Describes a five-week intervention to improve reading comprehension of four college students, focusing on expert reading strategies, metacognitive awareness, and enhancing self-efficacy. Finds that all participants improved on the targeted reading strategies, made significant gains in reading comprehension, and reported high satisfaction with the…

Examines the effect of training fourth-grade children to use the regulation strategy of rereading as a means of answering questions about previously read text. Finds that subjects trained in the rereading strategy used the strategy more often and were more likely to produce correct responses than were control subjects. (RS)