Research indicates that prior knowledge is an exceptionally important determiner of reading comprehension. Many of the prereading strategies currently used to assist reading comprehension do not help teachers identify what students already know about a topic. In an effort to integrate instructional assessment with prereading instruction, the…

Thirty-six learning disabled children (9-12 years old) participated in a modified Directed Reading Activity, a modified Concept Analysis Activity, and a Worksheet Activity (control). Results indicate that evaluative reading comprehension was more affected by both the modified Concept Analysis Activity and the modified Directed Reading Activity…

The study found that instructing 13 learning-disabled junior high students in the necessary prior knowledge (information and vocabulary concepts) led to superior reading comprehension performance. Textually explicit text structure also improved reading comprehension. (DB)

This study examined the use of story impressions as a prereading writing activity. Students either received story impressions, read a story, then wrote stories using clues; received story impressions and listed predictions about a story; or received no preview activity before story reading. Story impressions produced the highest level of story…

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…

Describes an adapted form of the "Directed Reading Thinking Activity" which guides students through reading assignments with content materials containing an abundance of factual information and details that need to be remembered. (RL)

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…

College undergraduates read stories from one of two directed perspectives or no directed perspective. An idea's significance in terms of the assigned perspective affected both initial learning and recall one week later. Schemata, or conceptual frameworks, were assumed to aid in memory and retrieval. (Author/GDC)

Reports a study that compared the effects of two teacher-directed prereading instructional procedures (directed reading activity versus story grammar/structured overview story mapping) on elementary students' literal and inferential reading comprehension. Story mapping produced better comprehension among third graders but no differences in…

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…

This report documents a series of studies on how undergraduate students learn from and reason with textual information. The studies described were undertaken to produce models that could serve as the basis for designing computer systems capable of structuring and presenting text material in optimal formats. Divided into sections, the report…

Describes a prereading learning activity designed to make comprehension easier in content area reading for students with limited background. (MKM)

This paper addresses the value and components of developing prereading skills to improve students' reading comprehension. Prereading activities are seen to prepare the student to both read and comprehend the story and involve cognitive engagement with ideas crucial to comprehension of the reading material. Teachers are urged to develop the…

The first year of California State University's program to improve university students' critical reading of introductory texts had two objectives: to develop professors' available repertoire of strategies for guiding students' independent learning from texts and to develop students' facility in learning from texts with adjunct guide materials…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of the study of organizers, directed reading activity (DRA) and SQ3R, on the immediate and delayed recall of social studies materials. Eighty-four seventh-grade students from an intermediate school participated in this study. The results of the study indicated that the DRA technique was an…