Offers a step-by-step procedure for teaching intermediate grade poor readers three important text-based strategies that boost their comprehension of expository prose by stimulating their thinking. (FL)

Investigated the role of "a priori" ideas in planning experiments and data processing leading to inferences. Thirty-one students (ages 11-13) observed a "combustion/candle in a closed container" experiment and were asked to interpret sets of measurements. Findings, among others, show that children preferentially experiment on…

Discusses the theory that reading is more than the searching for meaning within a text. Argues that the meaning of a text actually is in the interaction between reader and text. (FL)

Describes a study that explored the relationship between performance of a schematic concept formation task (SCF) and reading performance in students of English as a second language. Above average readers had significantly higher SCF ranks than below average readers. Offers suggestions for future research with SCF tasks. (SED)

Contains suggestions from two contributors, the first discussing the importance of distinguishing opinion from fact and the second suggesting 12 activities parents can initiate to improve teenagers' reading skills, such as helping them develop resumes or autobiographies and reviewing important business forms together. (DF)

Discusses six advantages to using newspapers in classes for older students, including the relevance of the news and the low cost of newspapers. (DF)

Offers a metacognitive strategy for helping students answer inferential comprehension questions and a research-based rationale for its use. (FL)

Reports findings of study that examined the ways in which third, sixth, and ninth grade students made meaning when they were involved in reading and writing activities. (FL)

Provides an overview of the recent changes in the theoretical conception of memory and language comprehension and how these are influencing reading research, assessment, and teaching. (FL)

Describes an Israeli reading program for disadvantaged adolescents based on verbal exercises using informative, literary, and speculative texts to improve their reading comprehension and cognitive functions. (HOD)

Given the existing literature on text summarization that documents what learners, particularly younger learners, cannot do, a study was designed to assess what fifth-grade students can do. (HOD)

Revised two stories from basal readers to improve their coherence without altering their plots. Revisions increased the difficulty of the passages as indexed by readability formulas but enhanced comprehension of both skilled and less skilled readers. (FL)

Argues that teachers can help students become better comprehenders by helping them learn to know when they understand what they are reading and what to do when they do not. (FL)

Describes an instructional method in which teachers verbalize their thoughts while reading orally, modeling their thinking about the text, and students practice the technique to enhance their comprehension. (AEA)

The first experiment made use of adjunct questions to manipulate the probability that kindergarten and second-grade children would make inferences during comprehension. The second investigated the relative influence of memory for details, memory for explicit information, and age on memory for inferences. (Author/RH)