The traditional approach to reading in the content areas has been to teach reading skills only in reading class, usually using literature or narrative selections and expecting transfer of those skills to content texts or other expository materials. The transfer of those reading skills has been such a disappointing experience that even students who…

Noting that "every pupil response" (EPR) techniques allow for all students in a group to respond to each question asked by a teacher, this paper explains how EPR techniques may be incorporated in a reading lesson to help students develop decoding ability. The paper offers a justification for using these directed teaching strategies based on…

The Direct Reading Lesson, as discussed in this article, is a method that allows for improving reading skills in math. The author suggests the following steps for using expository material: read for main idea; read for sequence or outline; note vocabulary; refer to illustrations and diagrams; read creatively, inferring, drawing conclusions, and…

Based on the premise that children's natural love for music makes it appropriate to use songs as a motivational vehicle for reading and writing, this paper presents a reading/singing strategy which promotes vocabulary, word recognition, writing, and comprehension skills while providing appreciation of music. The paper briefly discusses the eight…

Current educational writing and reporting suggests a need for making reading a more vital experience for the student. One of the ways being tried in the Rye Public Schools (New York) is an integrated, guided, out-of-class reading program that is keyed to the inquiry curriculum. Starting in the third grade, each inquiry unit has specially selected…

Gloss, or marginal notations in a text, and other similar techniques can be used by reading specialists both as they attempt to develop meaningful content area reading programs and as they review what is already known before attempting to learn new information. For example, several social studies teachers began their gloss activities by…

A study investigated whether comprehension of a text could be enhanced by careful structuring of the lesson elements surrounding it. One group of ten second grade children received a reading lesson as prescribed in a basal series that directed attention to irrelevant content while failing to highlight consistently important story elements. A…

ReQuest is a reciprocal questioning technique in which the teacher serves as a model of questioning behavior for the student. Following a briefing period by the teacher, the activity begins with the student and teacher silently reading the first sentence of a story. Teacher and student exchange questions on a sentence-by-sentence reading of the…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a comparative advance organizer in an oral format on learners' immediate and delayed retention of subject matter related to food and nutrition when controlling for learners' prior knowledge level. Another area of interest was to investigate whether paraphrasing the comparative advance…

To determine the effects of repeated readings with cues on reading fluency and comprehension, a study was conducted on 30 third grade students reading at or above grade level, utilizing three equally difficult passages. Half the children were told to read for meaning, and the other half were cued to read for speed and accuracy. These cues were…

Intermediate grade teachers can help students deal with content area reading problems by using the directed reading activity (DRA) approach. Prior to using this approach the teacher needs to decide the major concepts to be emphasized in the content selection, the vocabulary terms to be taught, the specific skills to be taught to aid in…

Reading is comprehension, it is a complex network of interrelated skills, and it involves several levels of thinking, but in a holistic rather than in a molecular response to the text. The practice of reading based on this theoretical understanding involves identifying levels of comprehension; noting that levels of comprehending are not strictly…

The Effective Reading in Content Areas (ERICA) teaching model comprises four stages: preparing for reading, thinking through information, extracting and organizing information, and translating information. Aspects to consider in the first stage include the preparation of ideas, text, and vocabulary. Two strategies can be used to promote reflection…

An investigation was conducted to ascertain the effects of the structured overview on both the short-term and long-term comprehension of average and below average readers. The subjects were 143 college students classified as average or below average readers and randomly assigned to either a structured overview (65) or a control group (78). Both…

A holistic approach to teaching reading can assist the underachieving student. The holistic approach includes each of the communication arts in teaching strategies: listening, writing, reading, and oral language (speaking), each of which interacts with the content area. By using the student's own natural abilities to predict, confirm, comprehend,…