Examines the benefits of allowing children ample and regular time periods to read on their own and in their own area of interest in relation to the need for children to understand reading as more than a series of unrelated workbook exercises. (HTH)

Offers Request, the Directed Reading-Thinking Activity, the Expectation Outline, the Prereading Guided Reading Procedure, Word Wonder, and Semantic Webbing as techniques that use many of the basic principles of the directed reading activity while adjusting to the needs of specific materials and students. (FL)

A Maryland school system developed a program called "Students Achieving Independent Learning" (SAIL) to help low-achieving students learn how to read. SAIL helps students become successful readers by showing them steps they can take throughout the reading process to increase their understanding. (13 references) (MLF)

Offers suggestions for effective use of the Directed Reading-Thinking Activity developed by R. Stauffer. (FL)

Proposes the "say and write" method and the directed sentence reading method as ways of using language experience stories to develop children's sight vocabulary. (FL)

Discusses instructional approaches to content area reading that are described in ERIC documents. Among the areas discussed are prereading activities; strategies to support comprehension as students read; an integrated approach to vocabulary, comprehension, and textbook organization; and kits of materials for integrating reading skills into content…

Suggests that critical reading and reading comprehension be taught separately at first to insure that students learn both to understand and to evaluate pieces of writing. (MKM)

Describes multilevel French reading course at Houston Baptist University in which class time is divided into instructor-directed time where students and instructor work together and student-directed time where students work individually or in small groups with learning modules. Students contract for grades and work at their own pace. (BK)

Evaluates the characteristics common to most reading programs and offers suggestions for keeping a program a learning rather than a testing situation. (HTH)

Presents two cross-checking activities to help K-3 students learn decoding. The cross-checking involves decoding by using the consonants in a word along with the context. Children learn to decode by thinking about two things simultaneously (what word would make sense in a sentence and the word's letters and sounds). (SM)

Describes how teachers can incorporate the use of comprehension monitoring activities into the guided reading phase of basal reading instruction. (FL)

Discusses how directed reading activities and vocabulary guides can be used in an English classroom to help improve students' reading comprehension. (HOD)

Describes a program for individualizing directed reading-thinking activities. (RB)

An innovative program to improve reading skills is described in this article. (JD)

Written questions and answers lead to original thinking and writing and to better reading class management than does the "directed reading activity" approach to reading instruction. (JM)